The long way to profit
by RonCN
Summary: Jarlaxle wants a new artifact, and he brings Entreri along to help. But he never guessed he would need an ally instead of a tool to win against the tough competition to be found on this new quest. Can they pull it off before someone else gets the prize?
1. And so it begins

A/N: _This story is set after Servant of the Shard, and is AU afterwards (sorry, RAS… but you destroyed my favorite characters ever) On the other hand, besides Jarlaxle and Entreri, it will feature two OC's that I'm quite fond of: hope you guys will like them as much as I do, and won't mind our favorite duo to share "screen time". In case you are interested – and I'd ask you to be, pretty please – the background to these OC's can be found in my story _100,000 lousy coins._ Because of this being a sequel to that story, events of _Neverwinter Night's Expansion 2: Hordes of the Underdark_, are more or less cannon. Also, there is a small humorous one-shot of mine, _Future markets,_ that can be considered a prequel to this story on Jarlaxle's part. Reading none of this is necessary to understand the present fiction, but if you like this one, I believe you'd enjoy those as well, so… (yeah, shameless plug, so what?) Anyway, please let me know how I mixed cannon and original stuff here, and how the characterizations go… _

_And now, without further ado, let me present you the first chapter of my newest success! (And worry not, future author notes won't be _this_ winded up…)_

* * *

**And so it begins**

Artemis Entreri scowled deeply.

The assassin, the most famous one of Calimport, he who was a name to be whispered lest the spoken words could conjure the presence of the deadly man, was used to scowling: as a matter of fact, one might even say that a permanent scowl had settled in his features sometime in the past, and that the expression had become his normal one.

But his latest ventures had taking scowling to a whole new level.

Usually, the human blamed his companion for his attitude: no one, absolutely no one, could travel with Jarlaxle for two days straight without penance, and, in his case, penance was a skull-breaking headache, a sour mood gone worse, and the clear threat of developing an ulcer to his stomach.

Usually, the human overlooked that partnership with the rogue drow had been his own idea in the first place, because, honestly, he couldn't even remember why he had come up with that one – not even why he was still going along with it.

So for the most part Entreri scowled at Jarlaxle, and Jarlaxle did his best to irk Entreri, and they kept going without further questioning, because, deep down, they couldn't deny that they worked well together.

Ah, but every once in a while there were those 'special situations', where just following along didn't seem to be an option.

"You are crazy," Artemis said, still scowling.

He knew that soon, he would loose the spirit to scowl, or even to frown, and would be reduced to sighing, but still, he didn't give up.

"But Artemis!" somehow, the overenthusiastic elf managed a pout while keeping his merry expression. "I thought this was exactly what you wanted! The very spirit of our joint business! A call – not by justice, but by _someone_ – for help in exchange of gold!"

The assassin cursed his partner even as he admitted partial defeat: he was not a man of many words, and so it was relatively easy for the dark elf, a true people's person if there ever was one, to set traps to use Artemis' own speech against him much as he was doing at the moment. For indeed, those had been Entreri's words when he had suggested that they become bounty hunters…

"The pay is…" he started to complain, but was smoothly cut off by a drow who could smell business a mile off.

"The pay is excellent! You must agree with me, Artemis, that it is more than generous payment for this little tiny task!"

"Exactly," the assassin said, still not giving up. "No one in their right mind would pay that much for such menial tasks. This is not what it seems, and if our employers are not being sincere, I see no reason to risk our necks while there're so many other options available."

Jarlaxle had to fight the urge to smirk smugly. If only you knew, he thought. Aloud, he resorted to his best tactic ever to bend Entreri to his will: he went into grandiloquent mode.

"But, Artemis! Don't be so heartless! This tiny little innocent village is about to be thwarted by fate's cruel hand! The terrible figure that even as we speak is invading the sacred land where this people's honorable ancestors lie is about to bring an era of darkness over…!"

"This is a swamp, there are no honorable ancestors here," Entreri deadpanned. "And I thought you said that it was just a grave robber or two."

Jarlaxle grinned madly. He had managed to get the assassin to discuss the particulars, and that was almost as good as getting him to accept the contract altogether.

"And I'm sure that there's nothing more behind this farmer's death! But, my dearest Artemis, they," and the drow nodded pointedly towards the house in front of which they had been standing for some time now, "_they_ cannot know! It is perfect! We will barely sweat it, we will be their heroes, and we will leave all the richer!"

Entreri got to the point of sighing – and Jarlaxle noted another small victory when he did so.

"This is ridiculous," the assassin settled for saying aloud as he thought, and it is even more ridiculous that I have run out of arguments to dissuade you.

Jarlaxle patted his reluctant companion's shoulder, and he congratulated himself. The job they had found was indeed ridiculous, for the pair hardly ever took commissions of such insignificance, but it had taken all of Jarlaxle's considerable resources to just _find_ a bounty, pathetic or not, that would take him and his partner close enough to the long-forgotten Dordrien crypt.

For the dark elf, everything had started several tendays before, when his keen and curious nature had learned of the existence of a certain item from the idle reading of a few volumes stored away in Spirit Soaring's library, while both he and Entreri waited there as guest before going on to destroy the Crystal Shard. The whole episode was something that Jarlaxle was rather anxious to forget, for it had left him, manipulator extraordinaire, badly manipulated, but he had stored away those bits of information he garnered, just in case.

Of course, those annotations, by themselves, would have been utterly useless, but when put together with the knowledge acquired in centuries of mercenary lifestyle and with a mind prone to schemes of grandeur, they had given him an idea.

And it had been an idea that no one else would have been able to act upon, but then again, Jarlaxle had, literally, an army of dark elven scouts, informants, and the occasional erudite at his disposal, so he had done the only logical thing: he had called upon it, and had sent Bregan Da'erthe to scramble after the necessary information.

Because, really: once Jarlaxle had linked lore, legend and gossip together, and decided that indeed there _must_ exist such an artifact, there was nothing he could do but to procure it.

The fact that he had no apparent use for the supposed powers of the Wailing Diamond was secondary: it was powerful, it was magical, and it was a _diamond_, and Jarlaxle must have it.

So when he had sent his lieutenant – or, he guessed he should say co-leader instead – in a fool's errand in order to find an artifact with the ability to command the land itself packed in a precious stone, he had had little doubt of Kimmuriel's success. Actually, when a tenday later the drow psion had reported that he had found the exact name, whereabouts and custodies of said artifact, along with news of a deceased Matron Mother who had been trying to acquire it as well, Jarlaxle wasn't surprised.

Well, he wasn't surprised about Kimmuriel's success. He _had_ been a bit startled to learn that his beloved mercenary band had acquired a brand new lieutenant – courtesy of whom he now could pursue his treat, by the way… - and he had been somewhat dumbfounded when he saw that someone had an idea for business that actually could give his "mutual benefit" motto a run for its money, but he had disposed to adapt the policies of his organization accordingly, so the surprise had been short-lived.

He was only concerned about how to enlist Entreri's help without having to share the goal – and thus, the prize – with him.

Because with Kimmuriel up to his neck in a paperwork pandemonium, with the Matron Mothers as bitchy as ever, and with half of Bregan Da'erthe's informants reporting abstract rumors of a Baatezu Lord waltzing free on the Prime, Jarlaxle could only count upon himself to create the situation he needed.

The drow had dragged the assassin off to the area where he needed to operate, and had been wandering from bounty to bounty before accepting anything, hoping to find a job that would help him hide his true purpose.

And, lo and behold, just when he was about to give up and confess, there it was: a farmer killed nearby the local graveyard, a crime that needed to be investigated for an amount of gold that Jarlaxle's people's skills had managed to make more than decent.

Even as the pair of sellswords entered the building that functioned as town council to accept the task, get directions and get the first part of their payment, Jarlaxle was thanking whatever local idiot who had seen fit to build the small collective crypt of Beregost _on top_ of the ancient Dordrien one.

o O o

People traffic was light on the road east of Baldur's Gate, and so not so many eyes fixed upon them, but those eyes that did were suspicious and skeptical at best.

Well, no wonder: the bright figure wearing exotic electric blue and red was a little suspicious-looking; the dark figure wrapped in a dark cloak which had the hood up, hiding dark features, was suspicious-looking; and the two of them together were really suspicious-looking.

The fact that they were holding onto a tree for dear life off to the side of the road didn't do much to improve this first impression.

"Are you feeling any better?" the colorful figure, a young woman of small stature and small build, asked her companion, carefully placing a hand on their shoulder.

"Just another moment, if you please," the answer came a little strained, in a rich male voice with the soft lilt that one can learn to associate with elves. A deep breath was taken, and he tried to straighten up while carefully keeping his head down.

"I would have never thought that an elf, of all races, would come to prefer cities to the wilderness," the girl joked, a slightly mischievous look in her eye.

"I do not enjoy this tasteless hives that pass as cities for humans, but at least there is stone or wood or something to find solace there. I apologize, Yria, but this openness you call the 'wilderness' appears to be more difficult to navigate than I would have thought," the elf dared to look up, just for long enough to catch a glimpse of the girl's expression, lest his sensitive eyes were assaulted again by the sudden vertigo that always seemed to go along with the onslaught of light.

Yria's expression had shifted to actual worry, and Rizolvir silently cursed himself for causing it.

"I apologize again," he started to say, bowing his head and fighting his weakness, but his companion squeezed his shoulder and shrugged his excuses off.

"Don't you dare act all guiltily," she admonished. "After all, it's more my fault than anything: I'm rushing you around without letting you recover fully, and you're doing admirably well taking into account that you've been but a few short days on the surface."

Air was forced out of his lungs, and a very shocked Rizolvir struggled to come to terms with the treatment he was receiving: no drow would have forgiven his troubles adjusting to the World Above for the first time in one – or rather, in two – lifetimes, and Yria not only did, but also insisted that he was not at fault in the first place.

She was an amazing female indeed.

_Which is why you followed her up here to begin with, _a lazy, nasal voice drawled in the back of Rizolvir's head.

The voice belonged to Enserric: a sentient longsword of unknown origin that had found its way to the dark elf's hands, and who had a loud mouth and a bad habit of always making its opinion known. Sometimes, it offered helpful advice or interesting insight to a new situation.

_Though I'd not have gone this far to bed her, of course. _

Mostly, though, Rizolvir had to fight the urge to use the skills he had acquired while in service of the deceased House Zarosta, and to re-forge it into a chamber pot.

_And you won't even manage that if you don't stop behaving so drowlike, pal._

Rizolvir's hand closed angrily over Enserric's pommel, and he sent a mental frown its way. _"That is enough. Do not disrespect her like that again."_

"I feel that I can continue now, Yria," he said aloud, silencing the telepathic lecture coming his way that insisted in saying that there was no disrespect whatsoever and that that kind of mentality was his problem to begin with.

He felt the girl studying him for a moment, but apparently she decided that he was being sincere because she nodded and reassumed walking.

As they started to leave the city far behind, the drow noted that she hadn't let go of his shoulder, and her presence was welcome against the flimsy canopy of green that protected him from the sheer void that was the so-called 'sky'. Rizolvir thought back to the one previous time she had walked by his side, like an equal, back in the drow city of Lith My'athar: that had been the time he realized just how peculiar the diminutive human sorceress really was.

In spite of all that had happened between the there and then, and no matter how much he liked it, it still felt slightly improper to him.

_See what I mean? How are you going to woo her if you can't even look at her!_

"_Enserric, shut up, truly. Go back to sleep and let me be,"_ Rizolvir rolled his eyes, even though his sword couldn't see it – he knew that it could feel it.

_I don't want to. I've been stuck for forever in this smelly scabbard. I want to fix your love life. I want some action!_

"_I do not care about what you want. It has been five cycles since our last battle. You will end somewhere much smellier if you do not obey. My love life does not need any advice coming from a _sword._ And we will see action soon enough."_

_Aha! _Enserric's usual drawl perked up, and the sword sounded interested. _What's coming up, pal?_

Rizolvir went to shrug, but he stopped himself, not wanting to disturb Yria and cause her to withdraw her hand from his shoulder. He settled for arching a delicately sculpted eyebrow.

"_I do not know. It is not my place to question Mistress Yria."_

The telepathic connection with Enserric sent him an unusual feeling, and he had the distinct impression that if the sword had hair, it would be pulling it out by now.

_Why did I end up with such a mentally challenged drow?_, the sword complained. _It is not questioning; it's called 'conversation', and, go figure, humans are quite fond of it…_

Rizolvir suppressed the angry comeback that burned in his mind, and pondered upon what the sentient sword had said. It was true that Yria enjoyed to talk, and he guessed that there was nothing wrong with making their next goal into their talking topic.

From time to time, Enserric did make a good point.

"Yria," he said, softly, still unused to the constant noise of the surface and half expecting his voice to echo and carry as it used to back in the Underdark, "I was wondering, what shall our destination be?"

"What?," she said, clearly surprised. "You don't know?"

"I am afraid that I am not aware, no. Should I be?"

"Well, you were there in the temple while we discussed it, but I guess you didn't have any reason to pay attention to that old dwarf…"

"Oh, the dwarf… I did pay attention, Yria," he smiled wryly, knowing that somehow she would recognize the gesture in his voice even if she couldn't see his shadowed face. "But listening to and understanding his speech were two different matters altogether."

At that, she let out a hearty laugh.

"Yeah, he had quite the accented common, didn't he?"

"I was not even aware that he was actually speaking common."

"Well, don't you worry; you'll get the hang of it soon enough," Yria squeezed his shoulder briefly before deciding to answer his original question.

"It is obvious that Calls for Heroes are _not_ the way to get rich," a dark wave of anger ruffled past the pair when she recalled her earlier experience with 'hero-ing', "so we're going to try another approach: Treasure Plundering!"

Rizolvir peered out from beneath his cowl, to check that he was listening properly. Apparently, he was.

"This activity is expected to be more profitable?"

"Yup! You see, we set up a contract to recover something or other, so we have a minimum of expenses paid for! Then we find the item, and as it usually _is_ surrounded by other valuable things, all we have to do is take our price and pocket the change!"

It didn't sound too bad a plan.

"It does sound promising. What is our first objective, then?"

"Sune's Bloody Kiss. It is supposed to be a holy thingy that did something or other and that was stolen a hell of a lot of time ago by someone and…" Rizolvir's barely contained chuckle interrupted Yria's explanation. "Hey! What's so funny?"

"We do not know much of that which we seek, Yria."

"Of course not. I want to recover it and get paid; if I learn what it does and decide to keep it for myself, the whole point of Treasure Hunting will be lost… Ah, it's going to be difficult enough just because it looks like a diamond, don't you think?"

"Yes, I believe that it shall be…" Rizolvir smiled. It wasn't going to be just difficult, it would be heart wrenching.


	2. Toughing it out

A/N: _Updating this fast is not too usual, but I got carried away with my reviewers so… Here it is, another chapter. _

_And, oops! I talked so much that I forgot to do the _disclaimer_ on the previous posting! But it was not out of malice: What is not mine, doesn't belong to me and I never intended to claim otherwise. No money is being made._

* * *

**Toughing it out**

Jarlaxle stared quizzically at the muddled up soil.

Entreri glared mutinously at the muddled up soil.

A few minutes went by.

"Well?," Jarlaxle asked, taking off his great hat with a flourish and running a hand over his sweaty scalp.

"Well, what?," his companion asked, turning his glare from the floor to the dark elf standing by his side.

"… Let's try again. Well, what have you determined?," if one didn't know better, Jarlaxle would have seemed to be the perfect picture of innocence.

The assassin reached up with one hand to rub the bridge of his nose, the other never too far off his weapons' belt.

"Curse it, Jarlaxle… I see mud and some squashed grass and the remnants of a fertilizer I'd rather not think about… What do you want me to determine?"

"Oh? But you're famous for chasing your prey across land and sea, and always, always finding your quarry!," the rogue pouted, starting to get truly distressed. "How can you not be able to tell which way we must go now?"

"Yes, Jarlaxle. I follow them across roads and ships and inns and _places where there're witness to ask._ Definitely not across the wilderness."

The pair was standing in the approximate spot – as approximate as they'd been able to approximate – where the corpse of a local farmed had been found. Their newest job was to investigate the scene and find out who had killed the man, and why.

Jarlaxle had taken the bounty because the murder had been committed close, very close to the village's communal crypt, and he was wholeheartedly hoping for the culprits to have taken refuge there – or, at the very least, to give him a good reason to snoop around the place.

And now, it turned out that his companion not only hadn't pointed towards the graveyard, but couldn't even tell which direction those sods had run off to!

No matter, Jarlaxle thought, if the situation doesn't arise, I shall create it myself!

The dark elf pointed his finger to the closed door to Beregost's tumulus that was just a few yards away.

"Oh! Look over there, Artemis! Perhaps these foul bandits we are dealing with have taken refuge in the barrow! We should go and check it out!"

Entreri gave a long, weary look to his partner, but the only answer that was forthcoming was the lifting of an eyebrow. Still, it was an expression, and coming from the master of blankness that was the calishite assassin, Jarlaxle decided to take that as a sign of encouragement.

The two figures made their way slowly, their keen senses trained to their environment and their weapons ready to be brought forth, for even if Jarlaxle himself didn't believe that there was anyone menacing enough around the location, they both had lived long enough thanks to their nearly paranoiac behavior.

When they got to the masonry double doors that franked the entrance to the final resting place of the dead of Beregost, it was Entreri who stepped forward and gave a cursory glance to the obstacle.

"There's no one here, and there hasn't been."

"Are you sure?," Jarlaxle almost cursed under his breath; he was so sure that, if he got into that village's crypt, he would find his way down to his real destination…

Entreri gave the drow a look that spoke volumes of how kindly he took to having his abilities questioned, and his voice dropped dangerously close to a low growl.

"The doorjamb is sealed with dry resin, and there's settled dust lying there. The moss that has grown upon the stone here… and… here… is undisturbed, which wouldn't be if someone had opened this door in these last tendays. Besides, the obvious amateur trap used to protect the threshold is still armed," he enumerated, calmly, while still staring hard at his companion. "However, I am going to play along, because you're not going to let me be otherwise… and I'm going to say that, who knows, the necromancer hiding in there might have used a spell… and I'm going to remove the trap like this… and I'm going to say that we should take a look inside, just in case. Happy now?"

"That's the spirit! Let us enter and solve this mystery, then!," Jarlaxle didn't gulp at the accusatory glance the assassin was throwing his way, but on some level, he got slightly worried that his actions had been so desperate so as to be obvious.

Well, it couldn't be helped. Sooner or later, the assassin would find out what the mission was really about – Jarlaxle didn't underestimate him enough to believe that the man would raid an ancient tomb and believe it was just to find out why a peasant had died.

Keeping the secret from him then, in the earlier stages of the quest, while it was still possible, was more an exercise of habit than of necessity or real malice on Jarlaxle's part.

Well, that, and of wanting to keep the loot to himself… But the drow mercenary wasn't too concerned on that front: Artemis wasn't too well known for coveting magical objects, so he probably would not complain to Jarlaxle having the Wailing Diamond.

But on the other hand, the drow would never live long enough to hear the end of the human's complains on a different matter, namely on how he always rushed them into deep trouble just to pocket some shiny sparkling item.

So it was just as well that Entreri didn't know what to make of their new bounty hunting job – yet.

Jarlaxle produced one of his magical daggers, and proceeded to work on one half of the door, scratching it free of the bothersome resin that kept the tomb sealed while Artemis started to do the same on the other half, aided by a small metallic cylinder that he usually used to set his own traps, and within a few moments the gate was free.

"How do you want to do this?," Entreri asked as he pocketed his tool.

The dark elf gestured towards the door and took a step to the side, to avoid being directly in front of the opening.

"Do carry on. You push the door, and I'll cover you."

The assassin snorted and put his right shoulder to the heavy stone slab, keeping his left hand ready upon the hilt of his dagger.

Not that he didn't trust his companion, but just in case…

"I hope there's no one in there. We are making enough noise to put an entire regiment on alert," and he pushed, and the door opened a crack. Nothing happened, so he pushed again, making the crack wide enough for a person to slip through, and… "Something's not right." The acrid smell of decay hit him square on the nose, accentuated by the difference in temperature that made a whiff of breeze blow past him.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"When was the last person buried here?," Entreri countered.

"Our employer mentioned that it had been over a year."

"Does this smell like a year to you?"

Jarlaxle crept closer to where the human was standing, and sniffed at the air. There was, indeed, a pungent odor coming from inside the crypt, an odor the two mercenaries were familiar with: that of freshly rotting flesh.

It made Jarlaxle grin widely while he tipped his hat slightly to the assassin.

"Hah! Who was right yet again, dearest Artemis?"

Entreri rolled his eyes.

"Wipe that smug smile off you face or I'll do it for you. We don't know who was right yet."

"Reluctant to admit defeat, aren't we?," and the drow flashed his most mischievous smile, a wide streak of white parting his ebony face and earning a dark glare in return.

The human touched his magical earring, calling upon its power and enhancing his vision so that he could see in the infrared spectrum as well as he could in broad daylight, and slipped inside the tomb.

Artemis hated to admit it, but sometimes to only way to survive Jarlaxle's verbal sparring matches was to hightail it out of the conversation.

Even if doing so meant wandering into a deserted tumulus that didn't feel like it was as deserted as it should be.

The calishite assassin crept forward as he had done so many times before, his wiry muscles tensed and ready to spring, his step silent and sure, his eyes wandering everywhere and looking for traps, enemies, or any other kind of threat that could stand between his prey and himself.

The only difference was that, before, he sought someone and was paid an inordinate amount of gold to kill them; whereas now he didn't even know what he was looking for, and in the end Jarlaxle would surely claim that the man was a disastrous investor and would want to manage both their shares of the bounty.

And it was surprising how little that mattered to Entreri.

In fact, he wasn't even pondering it while his eyes took in the crudely carved passage, wide enough for three men to walk abreast, that linked the entrance with the main burial chamber. He was only thinking that there were no traps, which was logical because, really, what could the villagers have buried that needed protection?

Well, and there was the small part of his mind that was always detached from his work, which was thinking that the damn drow was up to something. Yet again.

But _that_ was hardly novelty, so Artemis wasn't loosing any sleep over his partner's private agenda.

He might have lost some sleep over the rotting remains that laid scattered in the middle of the chamber and that were the source of the odor impregnating the whole crypt, but then again he was a professional killer, so probably he wouldn't.

Entreri spared a glance to the heap, long enough to make sure that nothing was moving, and spun around, clearing the passageway and scanning the walls as quickly as he could.

The walls were well worked stone, but each sported rows upon rows of narrow niches where the late citizens of Beregor were lain to rest. It was difficult to tell, of course, but he surmised that the niches were in fact too narrow for someone to hide, so he turned his attention to the one possible place where danger could loom: the other door that gave way to the chamber, another corridor that kept going into the hill.

No movement, no heat, nothing.

Still, he kept his eyes open and alert as he inched his way closer to where Jarlaxle was crouching over their find, dagger in hand and visible eye darting between the assassin and the chamber floor. The human gave a curt nod in answer to the silent question, and Jarlaxle nodded in turn.

He hadn't seen anything either.

"This is recent," commented the drow.

"About a week, I'd say," the assassin decided, upon considering the state of the body and the conditions of the crypt. "And that means it could be from before the farmer was killed."

"Why, yes, it could! Another proof saying I was right! We could be facing a necromancer cult alright, and poor Mr. Farmer just stumbled upon their unholy rituals and they had to do away with him!"

"Not so fast," grunted Entreri, kneeling down besides Jarlaxle to have a better look. "I just see a mangled body, nothing else. Besides, if – and note how I say _if_ – your necromancers had caught the farmer, wouldn't they have used him in their rituals, instead of leaving him out there for all to see?"

The drow shrugged, unconcerned.

"Perhaps the farmer wasn't suited to their purposes. Perhaps they needed a young and beautiful maiden to undergo…"

"Too much information," Entreri grimaced, holding up a hand to forestall the drow. "Still, does this look like ritualistic killing to you?"

Jarlaxle cocked his head and examined the body.

Then, he cocked it to the other side.

No, it hadn't improved: no matter how he looked at it, it did _not_ look ritualistic.

It looked torn and squashed and broken and – was that bitten? – and, while the dark elf could think of a god or two who would demand such kind of rituals, the job in front of him was too random and pointless to be seen as a sacrifice. And there was no altar, no unholy image, no nothing.

Jarlaxle grinned.

"Well, don't you love a little good mystery to solve, Artemis?"

o O o

They had been moving slower than expected, but Yria had been right when she told Rizolvir that he would get used to it. The sun still hurt his eyes like white-hot charcoals, but the vertigo he felt whenever seeing the open expanse on top of him had subsided to the point where it was bearable.

Not too bad for three short days traveling the road, if he could congratulate himself so.

Still, the pair avoided the central hours of the day, both to get rid of the sun at its fullest and of the curious gazes of most anyone they encountered. Not that they were hiding, because the day Yria Ingerd hid from something would probably find a purple moon shining down on Abeir-Toril, but because they were quite comfortable traveling together and would rather keep nosy merchants and suspicious pedestrians out of their partnership.

It wasn't because they disliked other people inquiring about their business - although Yria didn't care much for it anyway because she was worried someone might try to go ahead of them and claim the Sunite reward that was rightfully hers - but because for every two folks that would look at them quizzically and be on their way, there was one that would try to pick a fight.

At least, that was the impression they had gotten in the first inn they had stayed at, where a wannabe adventurer had bodily impeded them from reaching their rooms, perhaps believing the superior numbers of his friends would give him some free equipment.

A table cleanly sliced in half, a burned hole in the wall big enough to ride a horse through, and two extremely pissed off glares later, the man and his scratched friends were paying for the damages and leaving with their faces arranged into grimaces that screamed 'I'm friendly!'.

It had been easy, but no one ever knew how good might be the next hero-in-the-makings challenging them, and neither Yria nor Rizolvir were too fond of pointless fighting, so they had kept mostly out of the general public's way after the incident.

The drow found that he much preferred the velvety blackness of the night's sky to its bright counterpart.

However, there was a small side-effect to their traveling in unsightly hours, and it was that they arrived to their destination at an unsightly hour.

At least, Yria said that it was their destination.

To Rizolvir, it just looked like any other point of the wilderness they had been going through, and its only feature, the long and narrow crag in the grayish rocky side of the hill, was not all that distinctive.

Still, he didn't question the human's proclamation, and leaned in to take a look into the crag at which she was pointing.

Blinking, he changed his vision to encompass the infrared spectrum, and he frowned slightly confused when he saw that the vertical gorge was slightly warmer than the surface.

"Is this volcanic land, Yria?"

The small girl looked around, seeing no huge mountain ranges with smoking cones anywhere. She didn't know much about the geography of the Western Heartlands, but it didn't seem to be.

"Nah, don't think so. Why, what's up?"

"I found it curious that the temperature seems to be higher inside the hill," he explained, pointing to the rocks that were so evident to him, unaware of her inability to see the difference. "The surface sun has never touched that area, so, lacking any volcanic phenomenon to explain it, I do not understand why it is warmer than the areas that have been suffering the blast of heat all day long."

"Warm, you say?," she asked, and there was that glint in her eye that meant business.

"Yes, indeed."

"Perfect! Then that means that this hole is deep enough to reach the tunnel! Let's go!"

_Oh my, she doesn't really know where we are going, does she?_ Enserric complained, its mood getting gloomier as it pictured a future trapped inside a hole and stuck within its scabbard.

Rizolvir glanced to the side, taking in Yria's countenance without being too disrespectful about it, and sighed. "_I guess she is not too sure." _And aloud, he added,

"Let me descend first, Yria. My vision is slightly better than yours, and I believe I am better prepared to deal with a physical attack should one arise."

"… Okay. But I'll be right behind you!"

_What? Are you nuts, pal? Why do you always volunteer to die in her place!? I said, and I repeat, that she's not going to notice what a nice obedient drow you are anytime soon!_

The dark elf ignored the onslaught that Enserric was unleashing in his mind, and he meticulously stripped off his surface raider piwafwi, folding it so that it wouldn't get caught in any rocks, and making it disappear into the bottomless bag that hung from his belt in the small of his back. Next, he put his left-hand longsword away, knowing that if he had to fight, the quarters would be too close to use the twin sword technique; and finally he adjusted the way Enserric hung from his left hip, so that he could draw it swiftly and using up minimum room, just in case.

And then he started to go down. Hand and footholds were easy to see for him, but soon the chimney became too narrow to look down to see where he put his feet, so he slowed down and started to feel around for supports. The inner walls of the vertical tunnel were extremely irregular, and at times he found himself almost lying backwards in order to keep going, or bending at odd angles to surpass some obstacle, and as the faint starlight of the World Above disappeared over his head, he noticed that his broad shoulders scrapped more often than not against the rocky sides.

The feeling of being enveloped by the land once again was unsettlingly soothing, but, knowing that his path would keep him away from the Underdark, he didn't stop to ponder on the sensations: instead, he cursed his lack of foresight when he realized that if he had prepared a couple of levitation spells the last time they stopped to rest, now both he and Yria would be progressing much faster, and he'd have been much more useful.

The drow's boot slipped from its hold and Rizolvir slid down a couple of feet before he could jab his elbows out to stop the free falling. Fighting to get a good grip, he grunted and banished those thoughts from his mind. It didn't matter, he thought. What was done, was done, and now he only had to think of getting to the end of the chimney fast, and securing the place for Yria.

_One thing at a time. First, let's focus on getting out of here and let's hope that there's a somewhere down there to go._

"_Too right," _Rizolvir sent back to his sword, doing his best to contort his waist around the crevices, and to ignore the dull pain in his now bleeding elbows and hands. _"That is only too right."_

Yria Ingerd waited for the off-white top of her drow companion's head to disappear from sight before lowering her body into the hole. She had taken a few minutes to review her magical arsenal, but she could not find anything in her possession that would allow her to levitate, slither or crawl down the pipe with any ease, so she went about it the traditional way.

She tried with all her might to forget that she was prone to falling on her bottom as a way to start up most of her adventures.

Carefully, telling herself that no natural obstacle would stand in her way, she extended her arms to brace herself against the vertical walls, and used her lower half to guide her descent. The young girl was about as tall as Rizolvir – or rather, about as short as he was – but while the drow warrior mage had spent a few decades working as a special smith and had worked out a decent musculature and a pretty broad chest, she was borderline skinny and the crag was not too oppressive for her.

The unlucky side of this was that, if she fell, she would go all the way down, without getting stuck in the narrower parts.

Crap, she thought. Think about something else.

The girl started reviewing all the spells she had available, and how she could use them to complete her task and sneak back out.

She went as far as 'fireball' and then, all she could think of was about how badly she wanted to let one lose on the Sunite Proctor in Waterdeep's Temple who had roped her into this Treasure Plundering mission.

No good. Next, she thought on how all her adventures seemed to start underground. Yria mused whether there was some rule about underground adventuring, or if it was just chance that hid the best treasures below tons and tons of rock.

It made her think of where all her adventures seemed to end – namely, near Death's realm – and of how she had lost most of her hard earned treasures along the way of the latest venture.

Definitely no good. The sorceress tried to think of…

How her feet had run out of wall to hold onto.

"Uh-oh…"

She slipped, and her bottom collided with a dull thud against the dust-covered floor of an ancient chamber.

Feeling a bit self-conscious, Yria looked up and found the ruby eyes of her companion staring back at her with a dumbfounded expression.

"Ouch…" she said, laughing nervously and scrambling onto all fours, trying to get up. "Well, trust me, this means that there's another infamous adventure coming our way…"

The drow snapped out of his stupor and dropped to his knees, quickly deciding that not helping a female up was worse than touching a female without permission.

"Thanks," the sorceress grabbed onto his proffered arm, and gave him a bright smile – only to realize that his gaze was once again fixed on a most interesting spot on the floor. She sighed.

And Enserric echoed her sigh whit one of its own in the back of Rizolvir's mind.

_Hopeless. You're hopeless, pal. _Rizolvir could feel the distinct mischievousness emanating from his sword when it sighed, but there really wasn't much the panicked drow could do to prevent it from giving an awfully loud telepathic scream. _Hey, pal! You think you will be able to swing your sword with your arm like that? If you're usually a lousy fighter, I don't want to know how you'll do now!_

A mental scream loud enough for Yria to hear, as it was evident from the way she jerked her small hands away from his arm.

"What? Did I hurt you? Geez, I'm sorry! I didn't…"

For a second time in a row, Rizolvir was so shocked that he actually locked eyes with the young woman.

"No!," he startled even himself by interrupting her, but his most cynical part decided that he could overlook the transgression, since it had been such a weird speech the one interrupted. "Truly, Yria, I am not hurt, much less by your hand…"

"What's this, then?," she asked, having found the small tickle of blood that run down his forearm, one drop after the other.

"I brought it upon myself," the drow answered, remembering to lower his gaze again. "It is naught; I merely slipped and had to stop the sliding with my arms, so my elbow got slightly scratched…"

"Okay… still, let me clean it. We don't want your sword arm to get an infection, right?" she said, cheerfully, and, even though it was plainly wrong, the dark elf didn't find it in him to dislike her concern for him.

_Oh, joy… my little drowling is opening up his mind to… _

_Careful!_

Rizolvir had learnt the hard way to trust his weapon in combat, so when he heard the note of urgency on Enserric's casual drawl, he was drawing the sentient sword and bringing it to bear even before the actual warning had completely registered in his mind.

He heard it just a few seconds after the weapon had felt its presence, a quiet gurgling sound coming from the darkness that reigned beyond the threshold to the side chamber they were in.

He shared a look with Yria to warn her, but he saw from he grim smile set on her face that she had heard it as well.

He also saw that she was pissed at having been interrupted.

To Rizolvir's credit, it could be said that he didn't even flinch when the small sorceress shot her fireball forwards over his left shoulder, sending the doorway and the adjacent corridor into a roaring inferno of cackling flames.


	3. The necromancer

A/N:_ Next chapter is on! This one was particularly difficult to write for me, and I'm not too sure of the result, but… Here it goes! Thanks for reading! Leave a review? There're a lot of things to comment on this one!_

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**The necromancer**

Jarlaxle's spirits lifted as soon as he set foot on the corridor that went deeper and lower into the ground. And it wasn't because he was any closer to solve the riddle of a fresh corpse into a sealed crypt, even though he did enjoy riddles.

No, it was because it was apparent that that corridor had been built by very different hands.

Oh yes, for the first few meters, there was the odd side-chapel in which lain the remains of this or that important family, but someone skilled enough could tell that that they were add-ons, great niches that had been carved into an already existing passageway: for one thing, the kind of rock was definitely different; and for another, wherever the side-tombs were, the delicate, eroded pattern that decorated the walls had been clearly hacked through.

Similarly, the more they advanced, the more old fashioned family crypts they left behind, Entreri's mood soured. And it wasn't because they were finding more and more elaborate traps as they crawled ahead, because frankly, Artemis was not too concerned when it came to disabling traps.

No, it was because each step they took, his gut made it clearer to him that something was out of place, even though they hadn't found anything out of the ordinary yet.

Not that Entreri was easily scared when facing the idea of a necromancer and a few undead, of course not; he was merely pissed at admitting that, damn it, Jarlaxle had been right. Once again.

The man cut a sideways glance to his partner. Surely the cunning dark elf hadn't planted the threat himself just to aggravate him?

The mere idea, though downright stupid, seemed to fit solidly with Jarlaxle's boisterous nature.

Entreri's mood went from sour to seriously ticked.

The assassin's expert eyes swept across the corridor ahead of them, the corridor behind them, and the small side room they had just passed, containing three sarcophagi and belonging to some long forgotten family by the name of Tierrin.

No dangers.

Artemis, still silent as a shadow, strode up to Jarlaxle with a frown firmly in place, grabbed the troublesome dark elf, and bodily shoved him into the Tierrin's resting place.

"This is it," he deadpanned. "What in the nine Hells are you up to this time, Jarlaxle?"

The drow, who had tensed and had almost readied himself to fight, relaxed again with a conscious effort and gave his most innocent look to the assassin.

"Why, Artemis, I thought it was perfectly obvious? We are investigating the untimely demise of Mr. Farmer, of course!"

Pity that Entreri knew the mercenary leader too well to fall for it.

He took a step back and rubbed his face, willing his exasperation to go away but only half succeeding.

"How much of a fool do you think I am, Jarlaxle?"

At that, said elf had the decency to look sheepish. Unfortunately, looks alone weren't enough to stop the rant that was coming his way.

"First, you drag me all the way to the damnable Heartlands without a reason; but I didn't complain," Jarlaxle made a half-hearted attempt to point out that they were in the _Western_ Heartlands, but the assassin's glare stopped him before he could interrupt. "Then, you refuse to take on a job because they're not good enough or the pay's too low, and you start wandering _in circles_ around the Trade Way. Still I did not complain. Next, you zero in on this ramshackle wannabe of a town, and wander it, and wander it again, until you find a bounty, no matter how menial. I let myself be talked into this because it is, in fact, menial, and your late behavior had us short in gold anyway," Entreri had to restrain himself not to shout, and he compromised by throwing his arms up in the air, in one of the most emotional displays he had done in his life.

A wry part of him noted that these displays were suspiciously much more common since he had started traveling with Jarlaxle.

Entreri frowned and glared at the wide-eyed dark elf, jabbing his finger under his nose.

"If this is a set-up to another one of your crazy overblown schemes, Jarlaxle, you had better tell me and stop leading me around like a blind cow to the slaughterhouse, or so help me…"

But Jarlaxle was left without the details of Entreri's threat, and Entreri was left in the dark yet again, because the assassin's words were cut short by a sudden flare of light creeping up the corridor and momentarily blinding their darkvision.

The angry assassin quickly stepped back and crouched, shaking his head slightly as his cool and level-head persona settled back in place. His keen hearing picked up a fizzling noise as the flare died out as suddenly as it had come, and then they were shrouded in darkness again, their vision slowly returning to them.

The two mercenaries shared a look, and in an instant, their weapons were ready in their hands.

Perhaps their argument hadn't been forgotten, but it had certainly been postponed.

Very few people knew stealth as well as Entreri did, but luckily for him one of those few people happened to be his companion. Jarlaxle and he raced down the now spiraling corridor, silent as a breeze, scurrying from shadow to shadow, ever forwards and ever downwards.

It was at those moments when the assassin had to stop, no matter how dire the situation, and wonder what kind of magic allowed a gigantic purple hat, a rainbow-colored cloak and a pair of hard-heeled swashbuckler boots to actually blend in. Inevitably, no matter how often he made such reflections, he had to acknowledge the existence of the so-called 'Jarlaxle magic', because he was sure – furthermore, he _knew_ that no one else would be able to be considered 'nondescript' in such an attire. In fact, it bothered him that the drow could pull it off, when he had had to spend years refining the art of being inconspicuous.

Besides, Artemis thought, glancing at his companion as they approached a turn, it hurt his sensibilities that the dark elven rogue could dress like that and call it 'tasteful'.

It was more like 'colorblind'.

But colorblind or not, Jarlaxle was nothing if not competent, as it was proved when he managed to stop, and to stop Entreri, before taking the turn.

"_It is there,"_ he flashed the assassin, using simplified and exaggerated versions of the drow sign language so that the man could understand.

Entreri lifted a shoulder and made a gesture towards his ear, which Jarlaxle promptly translated to mean, 'how do you know?' and 'do you hear anything?'.

The drow merely pointed to the wall. It was almost invisible, but not for someone who had been making a living out of details for a few centuries; and with the pointer, Entreri found the mark as well: a faint dark mark that was too differentiated to be the result of capricious dust over the years. Then, Jarlaxle arched one eyebrow and fingered one of his many rings, a simple band of reddish gold.

Entreri recognized the piece of jewelry and understood the message to mean, 'it probably was a fireball'.

Carefully, he changed the grip on his weapons, so that no accidental glint would give his presence away, and started to sneak around the corner, nodding quickly to the dark elf.

Jarlaxle nodded back and, with a skill born from years of hard practice, silenced the small part of him that wondered when along the way they had become such a finely coordinated team. Instead, he resigned to the idea of taking the lead. With a flick of his wrists, he shrunk his two blades and instead prepared to launch the endless stream of projectiles that his magic bracer fed his hand as he crept onwards.

He hated being the decoy that allowed Entreri to handle the hand-to-hand combat, but the truth was that he _was_ pretty much unrivalled in the dagger throwing field, if he could say so himself. And if there was another fireball on the lose, it _shouldn't_ harm him. Such were the drawbacks of being so resourceful.

Jarlaxle allowed himself a silent snort and quickly swirled around the corner.

Well, I will be damned, he thought, his surprise at the sudden revelation opening his eyes like saucers.

There _was_ a necromancer after all…

o O o

"I caught it, didn't I?"

Rizolvir wondered how she could have managed _not_ to catch it, whatever it was, when she had engulfed the corridor and half the chamber in flames, but he refrained from commenting. Instead, he tightened his grip on Enserric and tried to feel with the sword as it prodded the surroundings.

_Funny, _the sword sent him,_ but I didn't feel it dying, pal. _

"_Do you feel it anywhere close, then?"_

_Nah. It is… gone. It _is_ gone now, but it _hasn't_ gone anywhere. Get it?_

"_I suppose so,"_ Rizolvir answered wryly. He knew that the sword had the ability to feel the deaths of the creatures around it, because thanks to their bonding, he shared some of that feeling whenever the creature had been felled by Enserric itself, so he guessed that the sword meant to say that the existence that had crept on them hadn't given off those agonizing final sensations.

It had been alive, and it was dead, but it hadn't died.

Curious.

"Yria, please, wait. There is something not quite right," he warned, seeing that the sorceress was about to check the devastating results by herself. When she stopped and returned to his side, he sent his attention back to his sword.

"_Can you tell what kind of 'it' it was?"_

… _No. _

Rizolvir frowned. Usually Enserric could tell what kind of soul was in the vicinity, just as he could detect the souls there in the first place. It was an useful ability, even if it made the sword particularly whiny when fighting a soul he would rather not have anything to do with.

"_Not even a hint? Not even what it was not?"_

_Hah! Don't worry, it's fine that you use me as a hound when you've need of my nose and then send me into the smelly scabbard as soon as you get the chance! Whatever happened to 'thanks for the warning, Enserric'? To 'that's an amazing power you have, great job, Enserric'?_

The drow spellsword sighed. He really didn't have time for the sword's bruised ego. He let his sense of urgency flare up towards the sword, and steeled his mental voice to be as stern as possible.

"_I shall thank and congratulate you when the task is truly complete. We could still be in danger."_

_Doubt it. _Like a sullen child, the sentient sword retreated deep into Rizolvir's mind, effectively conveying the message that it wanted to give the cold shoulder to its master. _But if you must know, 'it' smelled like rot and perverted magic. I'm sure it tastes vile. _

Rizolvir nodded to himself. Inwardly, he was relieved that they didn't seem to be accosted by an outsider. Personally, he had had enough of planar beings to last him till the world's end, and he believed that Yria felt something along the same lines, but he was slightly worried at Enserric's inability to identify the threat.

He also couldn't help but notice how the weapon had said that it 'tastes': it seemed he wasn't the only one thinking that whatever it had been, it would be back.

Just perfect.

The drow was so lost in thought that he almost jumped out of his skin when a hand landed softly upon his elbow.

As it was, he managed to keep his reaction to a deep shiver running down his spine, and whether it was because of the tenseness of the moment or because the small sorceress by his side really didn't seem to understand that males just were not _touched_ unless it was to be punished, he preferred not to analyze.

He turned his head slightly to the side, keeping his eyes away but indicating that he was listening.

"You know, there really is something wrong here," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

_Truly, your brightness?,_ Enserric's sarcastic voice irrupted into the conversation, but Rizolvir simply shoved it back, letting the sword have a peek at the possible consequences should it persist with its derisive tone.

And Rizolvir might have been a bit soft, but he was still a drow, so the blade put up an affronted façade and decided to stay silent.

"It's as if the spell had been… tweaked," she went on, unaware of the sword's antics and of its master's reaction. "It has been too weak! Look at the doorway!"

The former drow smith glanced again at the doorway, and took in its charred appearance, as well as the smoked corridor beyond. It didn't look weak, not at all; but then, this was Yria Ingerd he was traveling with, and they were talking about her signature spell.

"How weak? It seems to be fairly damaged, Yria," he settled for prompting her into explaining instead of for jumping to conclusions.

His doubting tone, though, earned him an amused half-glare.

"That's my point. It is damaged. Therefore, it _is_," she said, faking a great affronted pose. "And it shouldn't. Or at the very least, part of that stone should have melted… and it's all intact."

"I see," he mumbled, though, in fact, things were just getting messier and messier in his mind.

Rizolvir wandered closer to the area affected by the spell, a part of him still on his guard and believing that an attack was imminent, but mostly trusting in Enserric and in his partner and just trying to puzzle out the present phenomenon.

He noted vaguely that, while blackened, the zone had already cooled down to the standard, warm temperature of the chamber and tunnels.

The mage in Rizolvir blinked.

He made a gesture with his off hand, performing a small cantrip, and his vision changed once again, from the infrared to the magical spectrum.

He had to blink again. Yria's spell should have left some sort of magical waste, some trace, but it was almost…. no, it was _completely_ gone. As if she had never cast. There were other residual auras, though. Just outside the door, slightly to the left, there was a fickle of green energy fluctuating in and out of the floor.

Rizolvir kneeled beside the spot, and smirked. He recognized the spell as one of the transmutation school, and it just happened to fall right into his expertise field. It was a teleportation spell, of that he was pretty sure, even if he was not too familiar with them himself.

So, whatever had crept up on them wasn't dead, but gone in the literal meaning of the word.

The drow had to wonder, what it was and where it had gone to.

Well, at least they had narrowed it down to intelligent creatures now.

Thinking on his feet, he quickly sheathed Enserric and reached behind his back, pulling out his discarded piwafwi from his pouch. He had barely draped it around his shoulders, and he was already pulling out the spell components needed for the minor divination he had in mind. Whispering a few guttural words, he allowed the beryllium dust to be consumed in his fingertips, and then he stared some more to the slowly fading remnant.

The spellsword frowned. He should have gained an insight, however superficial, into the thoughts and feelings of the other caster at the moment of casting, perhaps even a mental image.

But he was coming out blank.

He suppressed a frustrated sigh and stood up again to inform of his discovery, only to find Yria examining the blackened carvings on the dead end of the corridor. When the sorceress felt his movement, she turned to him a suspicious frown replacing her usual easy smile.

"Come see this. We need to find a way that is not that corridor… because we need to get downwards, not upwards, and I believe that this might be it."

The drow got to her side, and followed her pointing finger to a small oil burner embedded into the wall. Rizolvir couldn't help but grin. Back in the day, surely this corridor was alit with hundreds of the slow burning lights, perhaps even alternating with the occasional wizardry fires, but at the time, centuries later and in a land full of tomb raiders who claimed to be adventurers, that oil burner was the only one still in place.

"I believe that this is it, as well," he said, and the sorceress gave him her best winning smile.

"I made myself useful while you were busy!," she said, with all the enthusiasm of a little girl. "Now, what did you find?"

The male proceeded to explain in as much detail and as little time as possible, and, while he was clearly worried about the implications of his discovery, the sorceress was more piqued that the thing had managed to dodge her spell.

"Taking into account that your second spell didn't tell you much, I think we're talking undead here," she commented, not too pleased with the idea.

"I could have failed in my casting," Rizolvir added quickly. After all, divinations were amongst the spells he cared less for. However, she shook it off easily enough.

"Nonsense! Of course your spell worked. It's just that undead don't have a soul to examine. And anyway, we're in a crypt, come on, can you think of anything more appropriate?"

Perhaps they could have argued the point further, but the warning from Enserric had Rizolvir diving for the shadows and Yria gathering arcane energy in her palm right the next second.

Yria's face barely showed the shock she felt, and her wide smile never wavered, but it was enough to make her hold her spell back.

Well, she thought, I had pictured a number of things wandering the Dordrien crypts, but certainly not this.

"Why, hello!," she said, falling back to her favorite way to deal with trouble, even though she actually wanted to ask, what in the Abyss is a drow doing, teleporting around here? Because, no matter the looks of it, you are a drow, right?

And looks he had, indeed: the swashbuckling style, accomplished by his impeccable boots, wide-brimmed hat and fine open-collared shirt, was somewhat downplayed by the outrageous color of the hat – purple alone wouldn't have been bad, but purple with orange? – and by the mesmerizing rainbow decoration of his swirling cloak. Still, it seemed that the individual had given his best to his pirate look, because he came complete with an eye patch covering his left eye.

Yria thought about all the drow she had seen and met during her time as alleged savior of the drow rebels based on Lith My'athar, and compared them to the one standing before her.

Something about the mental image crashed horribly.

"Hello!," the stalking Jarlaxle said, quite happy at not having to buy time for Artemis with his own blood but rather pissed at having been outshone in his master game of diplomatic encounters.

Outshone temporarily, that is.

"Surely you're surprised to find me being your guest in this fine refuge! But alas, you must understand that it couldn't be helped," he added, making a great flourish with his hat and managing to pass his dagger-throwing hand as innocent.

"Indeed I am surprised!," Yria saw her chance, and dived straight for it with her most childish smile firmly in place. "However, I truly don't see why this confrontation…"

"I understand your feelings perfectly," Jarlaxle cut her off, still in orator mode, "but as a man of honor who has pledged his help to the broken village or Beregor, I cannot let you go," or else I'd be out of a bounty, he thought.

Yria tried to interrupt, but as surely as she had had the upper hand first, now she had lost it: she was too dumbfounded by the weird drow's declarations. Man of honor? Pledge of help?

He _was_ a drow, right?

Pointy ears, black skin, red hued eyes, stark white eyebrows… He _should_ be one!

Jarlaxle gauged that Entreri must have been in place, and took her silence as a cue to finish his discourse.

"Know that I cannot leave the honorable ancestors of the men and women of Beregor in the hands of a necromantic cult!"

But the mercenary's diatribe was somewhat lost when the nonchalant air of the arcane caster in front of him flew by, and even though the innocent smile she wore didn't change, suddenly it was quite a scary sight.

"Necromancer?," she asked, but it sounded like a rather outraged statement. "Who are you calling necromancer? Do I look like a necromancer? And thus says the fellow who lives on a crypt!"

Jarlaxle could have thrown a dagger, and probably killed her then.

But the rogue's nature was curious, and two things caught his attention: firstly, she didn't look like a necromancer. Electric blue was not a color worn by those to wandered graveyards at night, and she was sorely lacking in the skull-motif department, another must of any necromancer worth his salt. On top of that, her bright red boots hinted at a educated sense of style undue in any grave raider.

And secondly, she had said that he lived on a crypt. Of all the moldy and gruesome places to live on.

That needed clarification.

"Unlike you, I do not live here!"

"Oh, please! Just because you're pissed that I fireballed your place…," Yria stopped mid-sentence and gave Jarlaxle a weird look. "You mean to say that you're not the one teleporting around?"

The drow blinked.

"Whoever is teleporting around?"

"Not you?"

"Ah… No, sorry, not us," Jarlaxle cursed under his breath and covered so quickly that he was almost sure that the weird woman in front of him hadn't noticed. "…me. Not me. You mean to say that there is someone else here? Unlikely! I come from the other end of the corridor, namely the entrance, and saw no one… except the torn remnants of your last kill!"

"If it had been my kill, you'd not be talking about torn remnants, but about smoldering husks. But it is possible that this third… entity is teleporting around anyway, around this complex and…"

"And?," the drow prompted.

"Well, and!"

The two stared each other down hard. Probably, under normal circumstances, they'd have called out a fight, but now they were facing a puzzle, a piece of which belonged to each of them.

In Beregost's crypt, this wouldn't pose much of a problem, but Dordrien was another story altogether.

Their joint information could be vital to foresee the dangers lurking in a tomb sealed centuries past by the mighty mages of Illefarn, an empire rivaled only by ancient Netheril. It could be the key to survival, and, furthermore, success.

So they evaluated each other, and tried to assess how much the other knew of the mere existence of the treasures below, and how much could be revealed safely.

Yria was the first in getting tired of the staring contest and relenting.

"Well, the area is known to have belonged to Illefarn, so there might be ruins that this necromantic teleporting friend of ours is using."

Jarlaxle recognized the white flag for what it was, and accepted it.

"There might be one right below us, and, who knows, it may be linked to this level."

"Indeed. There might be a way to access it if we both look hard enough for it."

Jarlaxle had to smile at the oh-so-obvious manipulation the both of them were attempting, and, on a whim – much as he did everything else –, he waved his hands.

"Alright, alright… to prove my previous statement of honesty, me and my partner will accompany you in this sudden search and we shall uncover the truth together."

Entreri, who at the moment was more angry at Jarlaxle than concerned about the sorceress, dutifully took his cue and stepped out of the shadows, merely two feet away from the woman.

Yria spared the assassin a look, surprised to see a human and impressed by the air of efficiency and competence radiating from the stern dark haired man but doing her damned best to hide both facts. She knew she could have been killed many times over already, so, on the spur of the moment – how could it be otherwise for her –, she decided to throw her lot in with the strange pair.

"Great!," she said, and to the mercenaries' ears, she sounded sincere. "Then, to prove my statement of innocence, me and my partner will show you the mechanism we just found, and we will uncover the truth together!"

And that was Rizolvir's cue. The drow cancelled the spell that had him hidden safely in the astral plane, and reappeared standing casually between Entreri and the small sorceress.

The only surprise the assassin showed was a slight narrowing of the eyes, and that was more a gesture of disgust at the race of the newcomer than of pure surprise at his position.

Jarlaxle, on his part, kept a friendly face, even though his thoughts started racing, wondering what the hell a drow could be doing there with a human. From the casual position he had adopted, facing off the closest threat without a word of command spoken, he could tell that the dark elven warrior was there of his own volition, even if the murderous look in his ruby eyes at the moment suggested anything but a warm welcoming heart.

He didn't regret making this association, but he recognized that the number of variables and things that could possibly go wrong had just increased tenfold.

On the bright side of things, his curiosity and adventuring spirits had also soared, so he clapped contently and hoped that Entreri wouldn't be too difficult to talk into the deal – or, rather, wouldn't be too mad at having been plunged into the deal, as it was.

"Well," he said, taking the spotlight naturally and thus lessening to an extent the tension generated by the looks shared by Artemis and the other drow. "It seems we have gotten together a little joint venture here. I say that we stop in this comfortable, warm chamber for the day and celebrate it! But before we settle in, I must propose just the thing to formalize our new partnership!

"Let's set up a Future Market!"


	4. Breakthroughs and impasses

A/N: _Next chapter… It didn't take too long, did it? Thanks go to my readers, and specially my reviewers! You guys are the ones who motivate me to write at what I previously believed to be an impossible rhythm… In any case, here's another chapter… The plot goes on, slowly but surely! Tell me what you think about the group's dynamics and everything else, you know I love to hear it! Hope you enjoy. _

* * *

**Breakthroughs and impasses**

"... Come again?"

"Why, future markets! It's an innovative concept that I have developped while searching for the perfect business deal! It is so simple it is really obvious; everybody can understand it!"

Three strides and Yria Ingerd's nose was two inches away from Jarlaxle's.

"That's just it. Who are you? Explain," the small sorceress' voice, usually so merry and clear, was dead serious.

"Ah, of course! Pardon my rudeness... Can't go around agreeing to a contract without knowing who is agreeing with us, right? I am Jarlaxle, and this," the dark elf gestured in Artemis' general direction, "is my partner, Artemis Entreri."

"That's not what I meant," Yria said, shrugging the information away. "Where have you learnt from me? Who sends you?"

Entreri noticed the sudden change in attitude, and while he had half a mind of letting the damned drow be done in – served Jarlaxle right, for dragging him into a mess he still didn't have the full measure of –, the fact remained that he was the first companion who not only didn't hinder him, but with whom his performance actually increased, so it probably was a good idea to prevent the mercenary's cleanly shaved head from being bitten off his neck.

His left hand slipped his jewelled dagger free, and he flexed his right hand, ready to use his gauntlet to absorb whatever magic that that woman could throw at them.

"I would rather you did not take such a regrettable action," a soft lilted voice said, close to him.

Artemis spun around and came face to face with the drow companion of the ignorant sorceress who was foolish enough to confront Jarlaxle.

The drow was of average height for a male of his race, and while his build was still slender, he seemed to be more muscular than most of his ilk. However, lean or not, the general impression that he gave was that of inconsequence: there was nothing about his person or gear that could be considered remarkable.

He had been so not remarkable that Artemis Entreri, greatest assassin of all times, had all but forgotten about his presence when the colorful sorceress had started to interact with the no less colorful Jarlaxle.

Damned drow, thought the Calishite – not for the first time, and surely not for the last.

"A confrontation shall not be necessary, if you but wait a few moments longer," the drow continued, his delicate voice and polite words not quite blunting the razor sharp look of his ruby eyes. "Mistress Yria does not endorse the innecesary use of violence, and I am sure that this will prove to be a matter to be resolved by words."

And Rizolvir was quite sure of it, too. He had no idea what had ticked his companion so, but he did know that, once Yria decided that it was time to fight, she never stopped to chit-chat iddly with her opponent first. The fact that she had asked a question instead of firing off a fireball made him confident that the hot headed sorceress was not truly mad.

Even if it felt like the temperature had risen a few degrees in the last few seconds.

Entreri stared hard at the drow. Surprisingly enough, crimsom stayed locked with grey, without a flinch, and the assassin corrected himself: there was a distinctive trait or two about the calm dark elf, but most of the time he kept the dephts of his strength hidden – kept his eyes downcast.

Artemis gave an imperceptible nod. Unlike Jarlaxle, he didn't like words and far more preferred actions, but he thought somberly that this whole venture seemed to belong sorely to the drow mercenary – he wondered briefly if he had ever had a real say in the matter – so he would let said mercenary talk his way out of the fight or into the grave.

Knowing Jarlaxle, he would talk his way to profit, wherever it laid.

However, rare as it was, personal gain was not prominent in the drow rogue's mind.

Actually, his general mindset could be described as 'oh?'.

"Oh?," Jarlaxle said. Then he blinked. His thoughts seemed to be rather stuck, and thoroughly refused to come up with anything more.

Yria snorted in a most unladylike fashion.

"You seemed to be a shady character, and this only proves the point... Stealing economy projects left and right like that!"

Stealing economy projects?, Jarlaxle's brain kicked in, feeling highly offended. The Hells?

"I don't know what you're implying, but I assure you that I stole nothing! This was my original idea, and as such I put it into motion!"

The nerve of calling him a project thief!, the drow actually fumed, narrowing his uncovered garnet eye.

Besides, it was not as if ideas could be _possessed_, so they were technically impossible to steal!

"Future Markets are my idea! Come on, spit it out, where did you learn of it, uh? Were you with that Valsharess chick? Is this personal?," the sorceress tensed, and a spark flew off her unruly hair and fizzled to nothingness as it zig-zagged harmlessly through the air.

Jarlaxle froze and his mind snapped back to a scene a few tendays earlier, to the meeting in which Kimmuriel, the current acting-leader of his beloved Bregan Da'erthe, had informed him of the whereabouts of the Wailing Diamond. Accidentally, it had been the same meeting in which he had learnt of a new addition to the rogue band's staff, and the one in which he had learned of the Future Markets.

For Future Markets weren't, indeed, his own idea: it had been an alien concept brought about by the same source who had pointed him to the ancient artifact: a houseless rogue, who had obtained a job within his all-male organization as payment for his sevices.

A houseless rogue who had claimed to have served the deceased Valsharess.

The events envelopping this power hungry female were a bit vague in Jarlaxle's head, and, as a matter of fact, most of what he knew, he had learned via Kimmuriel on that very same day, but he knew that she had been a crazy bitch intent on conquering the Underdark, and then some.

Well, most drow females fit in that description nicely, but this one seemed to have found the means to do so: she had ensnared a Devil Lord, gathered an army, and marched across the Night Below. She had overrun a number of cities on her way, drow and otherwise, and had seemed unstoppable, but then she had been defeated and summarily killed.

So why in the nine Hells was that project of a sorceress referring to her?

Ah, things got more and more interesting...

"I have nothing to do with any Valsharess, if you must know," Jarlaxle offered, holding up his hands in a pacifying gesture.

But I'd like to know what _you_ have, he thought, and aloud, he added:

"I am from Menzoberranzan, and I have been here on the surface for quite a while now... you can ask my associate about that."

Yria looked back questioningly, but not to Entreri. Rizolvir caught her gaze through half lidded eyes, and nodded once.

"Menzoberranzan lies many miles north of Lith My'athar, Yria," he explained, and Jarlaxle filed the name of that other drow city or settlement or whatever away for further investigation. "It was the Valsharess' goal to conquer it, but I would figure that her demise came much too soon for the sons of the City of Spiders to have taken an interest in her actions."

"Okay," Yria looked back to Jarlaxle, and he noted how she accepted the information provided by the other drow at face value. Not that the other had lied, but still... weird. "I guess this means you got no personal vendetta against me... but still, how could you learn of Future Markets?"

The drow mercenary made a show of sighing deeply and giving in. He would gamble a bit, and see if he learnt something new.

"Alright, alright... I confess. It was not my original idea; however I don't know where it comes from. It was... a new contact of mine who suggested it. He arrived not too long ago to my fair city, and I can tell he wasn't born there, but he's Houseless and won't talk much about his past," he said, and surreptitiously stole a glance to the girl to gauge her reaction. "He says his name is Eldath."

Yria's reaction was priceless. Her face drained all color, and then she turned beet red. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, without getting a word out, and she managed to choke on her own breath.

Jarlaxle noted smugly that the human and his lieutenant indeed knew each other... most surely through the Valsharess... Perhaps they had been comrades? Lovers? What had drived the one to the Western Heartlands and the other to Menzoberranzan? Was it coincidence that he had run into the sorceress?

Too many questions, not enough information. One thing at a time.

For the moment, he thought while looking at the less than composed woman, chalk one up to me.

"Ah... erm... yes, that would explain it, certainly..." slowly, ever so slowly, Yria pulled herself together and beamed at the amused Jarlaxle. "In that case, I'm more than happy to formalize our association! My name is Yria Ingerd, and my friend is Rizolvir!"

Rizolvir sighed in relief, and Entreri put his dagger safely away – for the time being, anyway.

Jarlaxle's smile widened even further, and he clapped his hands exitedly.

"Perfect! Then, let's talk about the particulars! What is your true reason for being here? I'm sorry to come across as a snoop, but I must know to set up the terms of our agreement!"

Entreri snorted. Jarlaxle, a snoop? No, never.

"Tsk," Yria waved the drow's concern away, and lead the group into the chamber at which she had first arrived. "You still need some experience working with this whole concept," she said, off handedly, as she sought a place to comfortably settle her bruised behind.

Jarlaxle's left eyebrow twitched and Entreri smirked cruelly at that.

"Really!," the rogue chirped up, in a slightly strained tone. "Well then, please, enlighten me!"

Yria plopped down on moss-covered debris, and crossed her legs while her smile grew exponentially devilish.

"Our best expectations are uncovering the Illefarn treasures, and our worst expectations are dying if there's some nasty behaviour and we end up fihgting each other, right?"

All around her, the others nodded.

"Well then: we don't betray each other, so we live; and, regrettably, we split the loot by half!," she winked. "Just make sure that whatever you are looking for falls in that half."

Jarlaxle laughed, and shook his head. It was a simple pact, indeed, and precisely because of that it was so valuable. Perhaps he needed to refine his Future Marketing skills – just a little.

"Agreed!"

"Great!," and then Yria surprised everyone yet again by extending her hand.

Jarlaxle, a bit uncomfortable over it – didn't she know just how sensitive elven hands were? - but aware of the human traditions, took it and gave a firm shake.

Then she gave them all another surprise by moving over to Entreri and offering her hand to him as well.

Jarlaxle looked on anxiously as Artemis gave her the Evil Stare of Death before finally relenting and gripping her hand in a deliberate movement that managed to pass as solemn – even if its original intent was more like threatening.

Yria noted that the man's hand was firm and warm, in stark contrast with the coldness of his eyes. She decided that it was the handshake of a man she could trust to hold his part of the deal.

"Rizolvir," she said, her smile never faltering. "You too."

Buried deep within Rizolvir's mind, Enserric brust out laughing.

_Aw, pal, that is priceless! Not only she doesn't get intimate with you, but she asks you to get intimate with others! And without realizing it, too! Geez, this is just too funny... _

The spellsword wished for a way to hurt Enserric. Badly.

It only provoked more laughter on the sentient sword's part.

"_Damn it all to the Demonweb Pits..."_

Jarlaxle cocked an eyebrow, and was incredibly surprised when the dark elf recovered of his astonished state and, his shoulders shagging slightly in defeat, complied – even if it seemed that the handshake beetween him and Entreri was more like a challenge, and even if he let go of Jarlaxle's hand as quickly as if it burned.

That was weird. Dark elves didn't shake hands.

Another tidbit of precious information to analyze at a later time.

"Well, now that that's settled," Yria made herself comfortable again and faced Jarlaxle, "let's discuss the other vital point."

The drow rogue shared a quick look with Entreri, and shrugged.

"Why, I wasn't aware that there was any other point! What can be as vital as settling the good terms for our partnership?"

The small sorceress smirked.

"Royalties, of course!"

o O o

Rizolvir knelt before the damaged corpse that had been mentioned before by Jarlaxle, and went as far so as to prod the stinking mass here and there.

He looked up at the scowling Entreri.

"It is puzzling indeed," he commented. "Unfortunately, there is not much I can tell from examining the remains… I do agree that it is about a week old, perhaps slightly less, and I believe that no weapons were involved… at least not average ones, but that would be all."

The assassin nodded. Jarlaxle and he had determined as much.

"A beast of some kind, then."

"No, not that," Rizolvir sighed, frustrated at not being able to produce an acceptable answer that would shed some light to the matter at hand. "Look over here; the depth and cleanliness of the… ah… shall we call it wound, for lack of a better term… suggest a sharp material of a certain quality… but the width of each cut does not correspond with that of a weapon's blade, which is what seems to be somewhat confusing."

Entreri frowned and considered the new development. He went to ask something, but a loud shout cut him short.

"**Five per cent!? You surely jest!?"**

The pair waited patiently for the echoes to die out before continuing their conversation as if nothing had happened.

After all, the gruesome noises and sudden outbursts had been coming out of the second chamber of Beregost's crypt and carrying throughout the complex for quite a while… Long enough for Entreri and Rizolvir to tire of the spectacle and set out in a little expeditionary trip of their own.

"You seem quite sure. Are you some kind of scout?," the assassin wondered when silence enveloped them again.

"No; I just used to work as a smith for the noble House that took me in before the rise of the Valsharess. I am familiar with what can be done with most materials in the forge," the dark elf replied, shrugging one shoulder in the process. "However, I wish I had some scout training… It would be helpful to solve this mystery."

"**Four percent, and it's the best offer that's ever been made to you!"**

Entreri clenched his jaw when the ruckus interrupted him yet again and simply nodded in response.

The whole crypt was full of dust, moss and spider webs, and surely it all told a clear story to those who could read the language of tracks. Unfortunately, the number of thus capable people in their ragtag group amounted to zero.

"Let us return," the spellsword stood and dusted off his pants. "There is nothing else of interest here."

Artemis had to agree, and carefully – more aware of each other than of the slim chance of the creature responsible for the slaughter returning – the pair made their way along the coiling corridor towards the dead end they were supposed to surmount somehow.

"**You're a leech in disguise!"**

The distance between chambers, once all possibilities of danger had been cleared and the small side chapels were ignored, was not too great and soon fragments of heated conversation started to reach them with increased clarity.

Drow and human shared an uncomfortable look. They should go and examine the possible secret door found in the brick wall that closed off the crypt from the complex they were attempting to reach, but doing so would put them at the mercy of the verbal onslaught going on close by.

"**Two percent and I'm cutting my own throat!"**

Rizolvir reached out to touch the engraved walls, a thoughtful frown in place.

"I would not mind knowing the meaning of these carvings either. They had a faint magical aura when I examined the area earlier, but I cannot tell if it is merely the residual power of the teleporting, or if it is something else entirely."

"Can't you try again and focus on the signs instead of on the teleport?," Entreri sighed, giving in to having a civilized conversation with a drow. He didn't like the individual, - and, from the looks of it, it was still possible that they would end up having to fight each other – but he wanted to know what the Hells was going on. He hated not knowing where he stood, and he despised not knowing where he was heading. And he was in the dark in both aspects, thanks to Jarlaxle.

Damned drow.

"**You will have to cut your own throat and spoon out your own eyes, then, because there's no way I give you more than a symbolic one per cent!"**

The spellsword flinched and shook his head.

"No, I cannot. It is too faint and too foreign for me… after all, I am merely a retired smith."

The assassin was surprised at the confession coming from a dark elf, the so-called superior race, but he didn't let it show.

"Then, I figure that there's no point thinking about it. We will just have to contemplate an unknown variable in our plans."

"… **Fine then! One per cent, lifelong!"**

"**Why, you…!? Vampire!"**

Ebony lips drew a small smirk, and Entreri groaned and rubbed his face, tethering in the brink of desperation.

"Alright, make it _three_ unknown variables… Let's check that mechanism your 'friend' says you found. I need to get over with this madness, and soon."

"Indeed."

Rizolvir lead the way, doing his best not to care about the heated discussion that he knew was going on just out of eyesight, telling himself repeatedly that it was Yria's way to do business and nothing else, that she was capable in her own right and that he shouldn't fret too much over it.

"**Fifty years, then!"**

"**Fifty years?! That's **_**longer**_** than **_**your**_** lifetime!"**

But, sweet Selvetarm, it wasn't _easy_.

_Look, pal, if it's going to take the pike out of your ass, you could always go and tell them to stop being so moronic over it. _

"_Shut up," _the drow told his sword, more out of habit than anything else. _"I cannot tell Mistress Yria what she is to do, or not to do."_

_So you let someone else yell at her about it? Rich, pal. Rich. _

"_It is different. This is Mistress Yria's way; I must not interfere."_

_So you let her argue with that baldy drow because it's her way, but you will not let her have her way with you? Amusing, taking into account that _that_ is precisely what you want!_

"_Shut up."_ There were things Rizolvir would rather not consider yet. Aloud, he said:

"And this is it: the small lamp still attached to the wall," and he made a gesture, indicating the supposed trigger to the sulking assassin that was by his side.

The dark haired man stepped forth, and started examining the ornamental piece.

He snorted, and his contempt for the Illefarn empire rose a few notches.

Honestly, an empire that hid their secret passageways in such an obvious manner was deserving of every bit of annihilation and oblivion that had gone its way.

"**A decade!"**

"**Stop dreaming already! The first ten transactions, and even that's too much!"**

Entreri growled, and his shoulders shook ever so slightly with barely suppressed rage as his fingers clenched around the small oil lamp. How typical. That egotistical Jarlaxle had dragged him into the damnable crypt, and then had forgotten all about his own enterprise in favor of discussing ever further gain!

The assassin wondered whether the dark elf would sell him out for a few gold pieces, and laughed bitterly.

This was Jarlaxle he was talking about.

Entreri would lose his hide for a few _coppers_.

"**Stop being so damn difficult!"**

"**Stop trying to ruin me!"**

Entreri twitched. Badly.

"**It's **_**one**_** percent!"**

"**It's **_**ten**_** years!"**

Entreri broke.

"Enough! Curse it, kid, stop making a ruckus over a sand castle! And you, Jarlaxle! It is Kimmuriel running your godsdamned little band now, so let the godsdamned Kimmuriel deal with this nonsense! The both of you, focus on what's important!"

The assassin's roar was loud and angry enough to rival a red dragon's with an ulcer, but still Rizolvir had to fight to hold down a chuckle as two very peculiar and flustered figures emerged from the chamber into the corridor, dark elven male and human female both looking equally sullen and sporting suspiciously similar pouts.

Simultaneously, ebony and ivory forefingers extended in mirroring pointing gestures, and two sets of mismatched voices chorused morosely in perfect synchrony,

"I didn't start it!"

There was an ominous silence during which Entreri tried to decide whether to kill one of them, the other, both, of perhaps himself.

Then, there was a _click._

Artemis had twitched too much.

Four pairs of eyes stared at the oil lamp as it sunk into its niche, rotated to the left, and disappeared from sight.

The end of the corridor was still blocked by solid masonry.

Jarlaxle blinked, recovering quickly from his chastisement, and took a step forwards.

"What the…?"

Clear cyan light started spreading from the scriptures of the walls, and within a heartbeat it became too much for the group's darkvision, be it natural or otherwise. It spread from one rune to the next with lightning speed, and with each added character to the string of sparkling blue, the glow increased in intensity until they all could feel it beating rhythmically against their closed eyelids, their orbs watering with the aggressive illumination, pure as an alien sun.

They stood rooted to the spot, unable to feel anything except the light: it somehow expanded and enveloped them, until it encompassed everything – the blue glow was all they could see, all they could _hear_, all they could _smell_…

It was an endless vortex that devoured the very essence of their beings, until they were themselves mere particles of light floating around in a sea of icy chaos.

After a few seconds or after an eternity, none of them could tell, the maelstrom receded and they regained a sense of self, of space to be in and of time to be at.

Their skin tingled as their brain remembered that it had limbs and a skin to feel with; their hearing came back and slowly they regained their vision, first in blurry blotches and then, little by little, appreciating shapes and shades and color again.

They were all shaking, and sweating, and their pulses beat madly in their chests, but still, all of that was secondary.

The important thing was than when they could fully see again, they could not see a dusty deserted corridor anywhere.

There was only an empty, perfectly semispherical room.

"What the Hells?," Jarlaxle managed to croak.

Entreri gave an empty smirk as he tried to suck in the necessary air, successfully filling his lungs with stale air.

"Go figure, smith," he chocked out. "There was something interesting about those symbols after all."


	5. The labyrinth

A/N: _(Bows deeply) I'm __terribly sorry__ for the long delay in updating! And with all those reviews, too… I promise that it will not happen again, though it's true that my holidays are over now… Still, the problem was I wrote the whole chapter and suddenly realized I was going about it more like a Dungeon Master than like a narrator… so I deleted it, took a step back, and re-did the whole thing. Hope it works! This is the Evil Guy's first appearance, and our beloved characters' reactions! Tell me what you think about the character insights – hope I kept it IC… _

_Oh, and to answer an anonymous reviewer's question… we'll see a bit of Eldath, towards the end. His role would get more important in the sequel to this story, though…. Would you readers like one? _()_ Please, read, enjoy, and leave your thoughts!_

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**The labyrinth**

They were trapped. They were trapped, and, really, it was ridiculous.

There had been a single corridor going out of the vaulted room they had teleported into, and, as life goes, they had decided to act upon the rather poor idea of exploring it a little instead of trying to find a way back or even of getting a little necessary rest.

After all, they all had enough adrenaline to go a little further without resting, and, what was the point of going back when they hadn't finished doing what they wanted to do?

Unfortunately, 'going a little further' had turned out all kinds of wrong, and now they were trapped.

Jarlaxle kicked the solid wall of force standing on his way. He tried telling himself that it wasn't real, on account of it not having been there just a scant few seconds before, but his big toe still hurt like hell and so he guessed that there was no point denying its existence.

Well, doesn't that suck, he thought, glancing about and pointedly ignoring the fact that it had been _his_ rather poor idea in the first place.

He was alone, and the passage they had taken had disappeared as well: now, there was only a pale white mist swirling around his feet and going on indefinitely all around him, twisting this way and that and scurrying along the opaque magical walls that encased him.

Jarlaxle started walking, following the line of the wall that had appeared in front of him.

He was alert. It'd would have been stupid not to be, given the circumstances. And Jarlaxle knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was not stupid. He was confident in his own abilities to sort out the situation he was in, but there was a thin line between confidence and overconfidence, and the dark elven mercenary was always aware of where the limit lay.

And no, references to the Crystal Shard were not appreciated, thank you very much.

Jarlaxle sighed, and took a right turn.

Thinking of the wretched, disgusting, manipulative ways of the artifact always put him in a sour mood – and no, mentions that they were quite similar to Jarlaxle's own ways weren't appreciated, either. The rogue had been thoroughly duped, and drow couldn't afford those mistakes: he had been on the bring of loosing everything.

But in the end, things had worked out, so he didn't understand why nobody could let it go.

Jarlaxle's eternal smile dwindled, and he took a right turn.

It was humiliating enough to have been rescued by Entreri, but to have lost his credibility as an impaired leader was an even worse blow to his ego – and anyone commenting on how his ego could use some resizing had better keep their mouth shut, thanks a lot. These days, he thought, had everybody acting suspicious about him: Bregan Da'erthe behaved warily, as if they were expecting Jarlaxle to use the band to run after his own trinkets every time he summoned the psion temporary leader to he surface; and Entreri kept on glowering, and had gone as far so as to ask what were his _true_ intentions.

It was as if they all were expecting another calamity to strike in Jarlaxle's wake.

Jarlaxle frowned ever so slightly, and he took a left turn.

It was awfully unfair, the mercenary leader thought. It wasn't as if he was constantly making reckless decisions and putting everything at risk just because he had seen something shiny – and remarks of any kind are _not_ welcome, sorry for the inconvenience. And it wasn't as if the current situation were his fault, either.

When facing the distrust of his companion, of his associate, and of part of his own organization, however tiny that part might be, he had done the one and only thing possible.

Jarlaxle quickened his pace in excitement, and took a right turn.

He had undertook a new quest of epic proportions, relying on Bregan Da'erthe's information and endless supply of magic and gold, to acquire a shiny gem of unknown power and dubious usefulness, to prove once and for all that he still was the cunning mastermind that had thrived beyond possibility in the hostile environment of Menzoberranzan.

And outsiders whispering of bizarre proving ways will not be listened to, sorry.

Jarlaxle recovered his assuring smile, and took a right turn.

Then he took a left turn.

Then he took _another_ left turn.

Then he realized that the pale mist looked exactly the same as before, and that he had no idea whatsoever of where he was.

The dark elf decided that there was no physical space for such a huge misty labyrinth to exist. He took off his hat and ran a hand along his scalp, making a mental list of the magical trinkets and gadgets hidden in his person, carefully noting the information granted by a ring that tingled here, an amulet that was cold to the touch there… He hadn't been teleported, was still standing in the Prime Material as far as he could ascertain, and no magical effect had been cast on him.

Oh, joy.

He wasn't sure about what was going on, but he could make an educated guess: after all, Kimmuriel did work for him, and, if nothing else, Jarlaxle understood the vast extent of the powers of the mind.

And thinking about Kimmuriel's tricks, there were a few issues he wanted to discuss with the psion when he saw him next. For starters, teleporting around hadn't been one of the many things he had been warned about when the project of acquiring the Wailing Diamond had started to take form. And he really wanted to know who his new companions were, and whether or not his lieutenant knew anything about their presence there. And he needed a new trinket that would protect him from metal effects – or at least, tell him when he was under the influence of one, such as at the moment.

Ebony fingers reached inside a high cut vest, and caressed a small silvery whistle-like contraption before retreating again.

Probably, this wasn't the place nor the time to call an emergency meeting with the part-leader of Bregan Da'erthe. Probably it wasn't even the _reason_ to do so, but when all was said and done he _was_ the mercenary band's mastermind, and one of the privileges thus earned involved doing as he pleased.

So, an emergency it was.

Jarlaxle compromised by deciding that he would use the whistle as soon as he found a safe spot and could dispose of enough time to himself to ask all the necessary questions.

Glancing about, he had to admit that, while nothing seemed to be attacking him, not knowing where he was probably counted as 'unsafe', so he sighed, plopped his hat back on his head, and leaned against the white wall of force to wait.

Sooner or later, all mental powers had to dissipate.

o O o

Rizolvir's first thought was that deal or not, they had been betrayed, and either the other dark elf or the empty shell of a man that teamed up with him had ensnared him in some kind of spell or other, taking him off the scene to deal with Yria on their own terms.

He knew that she shouldn't have argued so much about the cursed royalties.

Then, he kicked himself for assuming such a thing, because there was no point whatsoever for Jarlaxle – in Rizolvir's mind, the only one who could think of a plan and fling his way a trick powerful enough to affect him – to have attempted to take them out so soon: there were plenty of chances to use fodder ahead, and it would be useless to get rid of one living shield, and to alienate the other by doing so, when the true dangers awaiting them were only starting to surface.

Some would say that it was a somewhat unsettling fact that the thing that threw him off the conspirator theory was that it would be much more useful to conspire at a latter time, and that it spoke volumes of his own morals and motivations.

Well, perhaps some would forget that he was a drow, but Rizolvir never did.

In any case, once it was decided that their new companions had nothing to do with the fact that, all of a sudden, he was standing alone in the middle of a misty winding corridor conformed by pale magical walls that wouldn't budge, the spellsword set about to the task of deciding what in the Abyss had actually happened.

_You know, I could tell you a thing or two, pal. _

"_I am sure that you could," _ the dark elf's mental voice was cold and emotionless. The best way to hide the fact that he hated to depend on a blasted sword to know where he was and how he could get back to his Mistress.

He felt the thought of a sharp kick aimed at his shins.

_You really need to stop thinking about her like that, pal. This isn't taking you nowhere, I swear!… Actually, now I've got half a mind of letting you rot trapped there…_

_"That would not be advisable,"_ he ground out, hardly believing that his own blade was actually blackmailing him. _"I doubt you would find a long stay in an alternate dimension with nothing to fight to be overly enjoyable."_

_Alternate dimension?_ Enserric snorted, and its nasal voice dripped with contentment. _Yeah, I figure that's almost what it is… gosh, really alien place uh? Pity that you're the only one stuck anywhere, pal… This sword's fine and dandy!_

The only one trapped? Rizolvir didn't like the thought of that one bit. If such was the case, he would be being a hindrance to the small expedition… and extra baggage was not exactly what he had set out to be… Besides, he knew that, no matter how ruthless Yria seemed to be, she really didn't stand a fair chance of surviving the human assassin and his dark elven counterpart if greedy pushes came to shoves…

His fist clenched around Enserric's pommel as he contemplated the possible situation…

And a dark frown settled in place.

Enserric was right there. To the light with it, the foul mouthed sword was even speaking to him, so it was obvious that it was there… So, did it know of a way out?

Using years of training as a mage warrior to drive his mental discipline to impossible levels, he shielded his newest thoughts from the ever prying presence of the sword before focusing his mind on it again.

_"As of now, I am still waiting for the useful input you suggested."_

_Aww… Too bad. I've just decided that I'll let you stuck there for a while. About time you tasted what it feels like, to be told to shut up and shoved aside, and threatened with the smelly scabbard…_

For the longest moment, Rizolvir only felt ire towards the sentient weapon. He had known from the beginning that it was a weapon of evil, and, due to some previous interplanar ventures, he was pretty sure that it was a devilish thing… But this was just too much.

Devilish and childish was a definite no-go combination.

_"The scabbard is a necessary evil. You cannot expect me to wander the surface world constantly waving a sword around. And now, for the last time, where are we?"_

_Don't know about you, pal_, Enserric's voice was almost too smug to bear, _but I am comfortably stuck inside a scabbard, in the middle of a corridor, in some tasteless Illefarn ruin._

_"Nonsense,"_ the drow said, his patience running dangerously low, _"you are here, and this certainly is not the Illefarn vault."_

_Of course I am here, idiot. Perhaps it's you who isn't there._

Rizolvir frowned, but suddenly, ruby eyes widened in realization as he cast his gaze about yet again. The thrice damned sword was right. He wasn't here, he was still there. The solution to his predicament was to defeat the reality of the here, so that all there was left was the there. He released the death grip he had on Enserric and reached up both hands, massaging his temples and racking his brain and all his magical knowledge to find something that would help him accomplish the not so easy task.

The drow warrior sighed and ran his slender fingers through his off-white hair, and, figuring he'd better get a start on something, whatever that something might be, he started looking for a clue so as to where he had to start digging at; where the fabric of the mental prison was weaker and might be more easily denied by his own will.

Unfortunately, it was not overly easy to break free of one's own mental projection.

Rizolvir so hated psionics.

o O o

Entreri crouched low, his back slightly hunched and all of his muscled tensed and ready to push him in any direction – to push him away from danger.

He had not quite seen it, not quite felt it… but something had prickled the hairs of the back of his neck, and he had known that he had to act, and to do so quickly.

Unfortunately, as lightning fast as his reflexes were, the expected attack came just as fast, and he found himself springing into a opaque wall of force. While a lesser warrior might have been surprised by the abrupt change in scenery, Artemis wasn't: he merely tucked his legs tightly against his chest, dipped his right shoulder and twisted his arm, and executed a perfect roll against the wall, away from the source where he had sensed the presence before.

The assassin came up in a perfect battle stance, both Charon's Claw and his jeweled dagger positioned in defense and half expecting to be rushed by whatever enemy he was facing. However, the blow never came.

Artemis scowled – or, rather, deepened his scowl – and relaxed ever so slightly from his leaping position. Whatever had gotten his attention earlier, it wasn't there anymore.

Or, to be more accurate, Entreri wasn't _there _anymore.

The Illefarn ruins were gone. So were his companions, if the Calishite could call them so. A light, grayish fog replaced everything and covered the floor, outlining and melting with the force walls that surrounded the assassin, encasing him in their ethereal jail. There was no trace left of solid ground, of low ceiling, or of long-winding corridors.

Somehow, his enemy had cast a spell and managed to isolate him from the others, surely trying to separate the group and to fight each one individually and at the caster's pleasure. A single target each time; an enemy singled out to be fought alone.

Artemis' darkened expression was softened, if not replaced, by an empty smirk. It was just him and the challenge, like the old times. It was a smirk that many had took with them as their last vision to the grave. It was a smirk devoid of any human emotion, showing merely the will to prevail.

It was the smirk of the man who had ruled the streets of Calimport. Alone.

He didn't fancy going back to that lifestyle, but whoever had placed the misty cage around him was either very confident or very foolish to think that they could defeat him at his own game.

Artemis slid his weapons back in their sheaths, confident that he wouldn't be attacked yet for a few moments and knowing that he had not time to spare.

He had much to do, for he would face his opponent in his own terms: a place and a moment of his choosing, not of someone else's, and to do so, the first step was getting back to the point where he was before.

Entreri started pacing, silently, slowly, one hand never too far off his weapons and one eye making sure that no one crept up on him while carefully measuring and judging the force walls, their surface, their joints, the way they laid upon the not-quite-solid floor. Most of his mind was silent, blank, focusing on this one task and forgetting everything that was not relevant to it.

Some might say that this abstraction from the situation was dangerous, but Entreri knew better. It was the way of disciplined combat; it was his own way and he had tested it time and again: once he had made the decision to fight, to accomplish a certain goal, it was better not to think about anything but the steps to that goal.

Everything else could be dealt with later, and it was this single-mindness that allowed him to fight on par with drow weapon masters, to deal with the pashas' machinations and to emerge all the stronger.

It was this mental state what would make whatever it was his new enemy very, very sorry for messing with Artemis Entreri.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the Calishite had been involved with Jarlaxle too long a time – for the assassin was sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it was that damned dark elf's fault – and some of the chaotic, procrastinating nature of the rogue seemed to have rubbed off on Entreri, for a small part of the man's mind was still very much aware of options and consequences, and was thinking, and complaining, and generally making a nuisance out of itself.

For example, it was wondering why the assassin kept following Jarlaxle. He had already given much thought to why he had saved the dark elf from the Crystal Shard and from his plotting lieutenants, and had managed to rationalize it on security measures: keeping a healthy Jarlaxle between himself and the blood-thirsty, Entreri-hating, power-hungry, belligerent, Kimmuriel-Rai-Guy tandem was the best choice as far as survival went.

But, once that that trouble was out of the way, why did he still follow the drow's directions? Why did he still try to save that dark skinny ass from well-deserved trouble?

More over, why hadn't the rogue returned to the Underdark, reassuming leadership of his mercenary band? Why had Jarlaxle decided to stay by his side, and to keep him as a henchman, over his drow subordinates and over a glorious return to Menzoberranzan?

They were stupid, pointless questions, and nothing annoyed Entreri more than stupid, pointless things – bar the presence of dark elves, of course – but he found it impossible to completely banish the thoughts.

Oh, yes, they would recede and stay silent, and let him focus on his task after some careful concentration, but they would never _be gone_, and sooner or later the assassin would find himself in a stressful situation where his mental control slipped, and the treacherous thoughts would surge forwards again.

It frustrated Artemis, and it angered him.

The assassin ran his fingertips along the angle formed by two walls, down all the way to the floor, and his trained hands found what they were looking for.

Casting another look around out of habit to make sure that he was still alone, his features fixed in a grim mask as he set to work. He still didn't know who had trapped him, but whoever it was, they were about to have an angered, frustrated Entreri unleashed on them, and one could be almost sorry for the poor unsuspecting fool.

Because, really, there was no cage that could hold Artemis Entreri locked inside.

o O o

Funny that she hadn't realized sooner, but the truth of it was that Yria Ingerd didn't adventure alone.

Well, yes, she had been working alone that very first time, before it all started, when all she did was tricking some copper coins out of the locals… But then she had gone to Drogan's, and from then on it had always been her and someone else. The 'someone' changed, and it didn't matter much to Yria, but suddenly it mattered awfully that there was not 'anyone' around.

The sorceress might be a bit crazy, and impetuous, and surely she was daring, but when all was said and done she was no fool. She knew she was good when it came down to bartering, that she could fast talk most people into buying silver coins two golds a piece, and that she had a pretty impressive ability to twist the Weave this way and that to do exactly what she wanted it to do…

But she also knew that she had many weaknesses to compensate for every one of her strong suits. For example, she was hotheaded, she knew she could be easily sidetracked if something interesting enough popped up along the way, and, most importantly, her quite expansive personality came wrapped up in a rather small and frail package.

So frail, that her body almost burned with the effort of casting high level spells if she had not magically enhanced her stamina previously, and that chances for a kobold to knock her out with a single hit were pretty good.

It was that last point the one currently worrying her. Keeping harm at arm's length was key for her to win, and even to survive her battles; and that was what her companions always did. From the grudging Dorna in her first real dangerous situation, all the way to Tomi, Valen, and even to Rizolvir, they protected her.

They made sure that no one sliced her in half, and she cast her deadly spells from a safe spot at their backs, and the battles usually were over even before they started.

The sparkling mist surrounding Yria was cold and wet, and it sent a shiver down her spine. The chill permeated her fiery temper, and for once in a long, long time the petite sorceress felt very young, and very small, and very inexperienced.

And if someone had claimed that she was not any of those things after having 'saved the world' several times, and after defeating the kind of foes she had faced, she would have shoved the claim back down their throats.

Preferably along with a nice, warm fireball.

Because she hadn't done any of that stuff alone. She may had been the strength to push forward, but… this was entirely different. In more ways that one.

For starters, she had no idea whatsoever where she was. Yria had teleported around quite a bit, and it usually was an action prior to many of her greatest exploits – very much like falling on her butt was – but she always knew where she was going, or who was teleporting her, or why…

Heck, she always knew that she was being teleported away. This time, she hadn't felt any of the stomach churning telltale signs of dissolving into the Weave to be dropped off somewhere else. She had gone from one place to the other. In a way, it reminded her of the one time she had conferred with Illithids… the way one moment they were silent, the next she could remember what they had said, and how she could never grasp the actual 'speaking' part.

Then, there was the part of being scared and not really knowing what to do next. The sorceress couldn't even remember the last time she had been so lost.

And finally, there was the nagging suspicion that a great part of the fear she felt was caused by worry. It was a feeling she was utterly unfamiliar with. People usually knew how to take care of themselves, and in any case, worrying over someone's health didn't bring any improvement to any situation, so she just didn't worry. On principle.

So, why was she worrying about her dark elf?

…

Scratch that phrasing. Try "Why was she worrying about Rizolvir?". He was a capable swordsman and a capable wizard, so she really shouldn't be thinking of his welfare. Even if he was in a situation similar to hers, he should be able to handle it, more so if he had Jarlaxle and that Entreri fellow around – she might not know them yet, but they reeked of capability. Even if he were separated and were being attacked, though, he should prove skillful enough. Even if he did something stupid, like trying to find and help her, while he was being attacked.

Fear and anxiety receded as Yria's face heated up, for once not out of anger.

She didn't know where those thoughts were coming from, but she wasn't comfortable with them.

… Perhaps she was just feeling responsible? After all, the drow had left his life – and his afterlife – behind for the sake of following her in her exploits.

So of course she would feel bad if something happened to him.

It was a decent enough explanation and she was going to stick by it.

However, just in case she kept thinking too much, Yria decided that she really, really needed to find a way out of the mist.

She didn't even know if it was a trap, so she discarded the idea of actually looking for a way out. Her control of magic was more about bulldozing her way through life and about the Weave responding to her demands than about meticulous studying, and she actually found books on the arcane matter to be quite boring – unless she saw a way to elicit quick profit from the contents of the book, of course – so trying to detect a spell on her and to counter it was pretty much pointless…

So she did what she was best at: she pushed forwards.

Arcane power gathered between her open palms, and as the fireball took form she wondered if the white translucent walls would hold the first assault.

No matter. After all, nothing could hold forever.

o O o

A sound of metal on metal echoed across the corridor. The creature reared its head, and fisted its huge sword-like claws, thumping them against its slightly damaged chest, the movement creating short-lived sparks and making its whole body vibrate and hum with arcane power.

It didn't know fear, and it didn't know rest. It only knew that it had to do its bloody job, till its masters told it otherwise.

Its all-seeing glass eyes focused on the four intruders it had just detected, standing still in the middle of the passage to its dominions, and a breath of poisonous air exited its muzzle.

It charged.


	6. By the sword and the spell

A/N: _So… This here is the next chapter. The site's been acting funny – but I do like the new layout, so its ok – and I had completely forgotten that I'm horrible when it comes to write battles – and the whole chapter is a fight – but… Please, do leave me your thoughts about how it turned out! Thanks for reading and reviewing._

_And now, please endure me a little longer to answer the very logical question of an. Rev. She Who Dreams: why the heck does Rizolvir behave so respectfully towards Yria? Well, their story is told in detail in my other fic, _100,000 lousy coins_, in very much the same way that Jarlaxle and Entreri have their own book in _Servant of the Shard_. In short, it could be said that Rizolvir's behaviour has two explanations: one, Yria has proved that she "has got the mind of a drow"; and two, Rizolvir is attracted to her, and the classical submissive drow male behaviour is the only way he knows to deal with that. Hope that answers the question for all the readers… I could go on longer, but then the Author's Note would never end! Feel free to review/message me for any details/questions in this or any other respect.

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**By the sword and the spell**

**(and the dirty trick)**

As quickly and just as suddenly as it had gone one way, it went the other: Entreri found what he was looking for, and the next thing he knew he was standing back in the corridor. His body was coiled tight, ready to take the leap that had been interrupted, and the presence that he had barely felt before was now a looming certainty racing down the passageway.

Sparks flew as Charon's Claw slapped against outstretched brass claws, but Artemis didn't have the time to be surprised: the flurry of blows dealt by his huge opponent was more than enough to keep the assassin's attention.

He pivoted and wove his weapons in and out, not so much having trouble to parry the attacks intent on eviscerating him as having trouble to keep the heavy mass of the beast at bay.

It sure was quick for a golem…

… If a golem was what it was, of course. It moved too fast, too gracefully, to be a thing made of an allay. And its glass eyes stared too hatefully, too enraged, for its bull-like head to be filled with nothing but lead.

But by all accounts, it was a fully metallic contraption facing him: it was the only possible reason for his enchanted blades to bounce off upon contact after each hit, leaving barely a scratch.

The assassin risked a look back over his shoulder, sweeping his eyes over the immobile forms of his companions. He half hoped that Jarlaxle was awake because there was a pretty good chance that the drow knew how to defeat the new foe.

Instead, he caught a different shade of red blinking at him.

Oh well. It would have to do.

Because he sure as hell was not going to keep that rabid two-legged cow at bay all alone.

He waited for the extra pair of blades to give him some leverage, and then he quickly caught himself short and did a mental double take.

Artemis Entreri counting on an unknown ally to win a sword fight. There were too many words on that sentence that should never have to be used together. Artemis Entreri, counting on, and ally, for starters.

The Calishite grunted, in as much of a expression of rage as he would allow in the middle of a one on one combat, and redoubled his attacks on the brass golem, so busy thinking of how much Jarlaxle's interference had completely destroyed his way of life that he didn't even register the fact that the extra pair of blades was not coming up.

However, he did register that a powerful back swipe of Charon's Claw suddenly seemed to be enough to send the metallic construct staggering a few steps backwards.

Agile as a great cat, Artemis rolled forward following his sword trust, and pressed the advantage he had been able to acquire. It was surprisingly easy to parry the next clawed attack, and when he drove his sword forward again, he found that the wicked red blade actually managed to pierce the golem's elbow.

The broken brass surface aged visibly under Charon's Claw attack; a lustrous shine only gained through years upon years of exposure swiftly coming over the mangled articulation. And in that old, worked metal, faint runes could be seen scribbled tightly together, covering to the very last square inch of affected material.

If one looked on fixatedly enough, the inscriptions seemed taut with raw power, squiggling and trashing madly in its physical confine; but, somehow, this impression was constantly out of reach: a pulse that could be seen out of the corner of ones eye, but that escaped as soon as one tried to focus on it.

There was an odd familiarity to those runes, though. Artemis could swear that he had seen them before, and if only he could get a better look at them…

As a slow moving claw engaged his off-hand, a weapon Entreri had not considered before showed itself.

Down through the opening came the vaguely bovine brass head, its open maws revealing two rows of perfectly forged, dagger-like teeth and clamping onto the assassin's left shoulder, dangerously close to his neck.

Artemis cursed his mistake. He shouldn't have assumed that, because it had a bull's head, it wouldn't try to bite him.

That kind of mistake was what ended one's life in the streets of Calimport.

But apparently, it wasn't so in the corridors of ancient Dordrien.

The metallic fangs screeched over Artemis' shoulder, and, even though the strength of the attack surely would leave a bruise, they didn't pierce the assassin's flesh.

And that was about all the advantage needed by said assassin. Recovering as quickly as only he could, he snatched his weapons free and twirled, both his dagger and his sword levelled to fend off any attack and, at the same time, to push back the opponent.

Slap! Slap!

First by Charon's Claw and next by the jewelled dagger, the brass minotaur's claws were forced wide, and by the time the sword's blade came about again, it opened a wide gash on the golem's chest, sending it stumbling back and to the side until it collided with the wall.

Far enough for Entreri to pull back and recompose himself from the close call.

He didn't know why he hadn't realized it sooner, or how come he hadn't even suspected it before, but in any case, he was no fool, and when he glanced back again to the drow, he just wanted to confirm what he already knew:

That the dark elf was indeed more than he appeared to be, and that instead of slashing at the golem, he was deep in casting, buffering up Artemis' strength and defences as well as his own.

That explained why the assassin suddenly could do real damage to the metallic golem; and why it hadn't been able to bite him. The first answer was a strength boosting spell, surely; and Entreri was quite familiar with the second effect. It was called stoneskin, and more than once a spellcaster had thought to use it to elude the Calishite's deadly blow.

And Artemis knew better than anybody else that those who tried, always found out that the spell wore off way too soon, so he had to make absolutely sure that the situation didn't repeat itself – besides, his stomach positively churned just thinking about owing one to anyone, and least of all to a drow of all people.

Still, he had to acknowledge that he did, and so he gave a curt nod to Rizolvir when the warrior mage finished covering his own body with the invisible barrier.

The dark elf was slightly shocked at the acknowledgement, but he managed to recover in time to offer a half hearted nod back. If the human thought that he was actually helping him out, so much the better.

At the moment, Rizolvir's only concern was keeping the murderous golem away by using whatever means necessary, but it was obvious that the man called Artemis Entreri was more than a capable swordsman, and the drow was not about to decline the perfect opportunity to lessen the chances of the human's blades turning against him at the least convenient time.

The warrior mage then did a quick review of the spells he had prepared for the day, making sure that there was nothing else he could use to destroy the foe, and when he confirmed that he had indeed prepared as best as he could, he sighed.

Time to go and get personal.

_About time, pal! After all I did to help you out just now, you sure were taking your sweet time to let me have some fun!_

Enserric's voice assaulted Rizolvir's mind as soon as his hand closed upon the weapon, and the drow winced. He knew that he truly needed Enserric beside him to win, but sometimes he wished the sword would make his support less vocal.

Unfortunately, that was like asking the accursed sun to stop coming up on the surface, and Rizolvir had already resigned himself to suffering the sentient sword's constant whining.

_Now would be a good time to get a move, y'know._

"_Yes, I do know." _The dark elf gauged the distance between the recovering minotaur, Entreri and himself, and used his magically enhanced agility to step up to the construct, his twin blades twirling simultaneously and opening a gap for the human assassin to fill.

And fill it he did, Charon's Claw raking down the beast's side and leaving a trail of aged brass and pulsating runes in its wake.

The golem shook its massive head, as if it truly needed to clear it, and tethered to the side in an attempt to retaliate.

But it was a vain attempt, because by then Artemis was well out of reach and the only thing it accomplished was getting its already injured arm further damaged when it lowered its guard and let the drow scurry a sword swipe in.

_Yikes! I knew it tasted bad, but _this_? It's like trying to eat rotten moss, pal! I don't know what's worse, if this awful aftertaste or the scabbard… Oh, do watch out to your left, will you?_

Rizolvir acknowledged the sword's warning, and took a step to the right as he pivoted his body forward, his off-hand blade taking the lead. He anticipated perfectly the brusque jerk of the haunch of the golem, which kicked to the side just in time to miss his body and just in time to catch a slap with the flat of Enserric's blade that threw it off balance.

The brass creature's torso tipped forward, and the drow focused everything he had in timing his next barrage with Entreri's, creating openings and taking advantage of those created by his partner.

Besides, the conscious effort of constantly weaving his weapons in harmony with someone else's helped to keep his mind off the rather disturbing question of how had Enserric come to be knowledgeable about the taste of rotten moss.

_You're wondering that because you've never had a piece of an undead. Those bloody things have got rot and moss all over the place, pal; you're bound to know how it goes together…_ Rizolvir's lip curled in a disgusted grimace. Too much information. Entirely too much information.

_Well, you were wondering about it, pal, not I, _Enserric's voice was smug and satisfied, and Rizolvir made a mental note to improve his mental shielding techniques.

The sentient sword obviously perceived that intention too, and it gave a nasal laugh, making it clear that, for the time being, the dark elf was failing thoroughly as far as keeping it in the dark was concerned.

_Missing your intimacy? Aw, come on, you never really had one!, _the sword taunted its master playfully before offering, _Mind the horns, will you?_

Rizolvir nodded, and reversed the grip he had on his secondary blade as his footwork danced him closer to the beast, too close for the impaling movement it had initiated to have a dangerous angle and close enough for it to be easily parried.

Just as he was disengaging his weapon, Entreri pressed in from the other side and the golem was forced to rotate yet again, giving the drow a clear slash across its belly before the momentum separated the two opponents.

But just as Rizolvir was stepping back, Artemis was moving forward, and on and on Charon's Claw hit its mark.

The warrior mage completed his own spin, and came up again wielding Enserric for a stab at the suddenly unprotected brass neck of the beast. Soon, the rhythmic echoes of steel on steel resounded throughout the corridor, almost in time with the pulse beating madly in Rizolvir's ears, and slowly the shiny body of their foe became dull and scripture covered.

The golem was indeed incredibly powerful and surprisingly malicious for a mindless construct, but it was proving to be hardly a match for the combined skill of the two warriors working in almost choreographed synchrony.

Then, there was a screeching sound loud and high enough to make one's ears bleed.

Enserric made a puking noise in the back of Rizolvir's mind.

The drow yanked his right arm with all the strength he had, and the left forearm of the golem broke free and fell to the ground with a clang.

For a heartbeat, everything was still as the brass beast shook its mutilated arm and reared its head. Its tiny glassy eyes glowed with something way too akin to intelligence for comfort, and then time started moving forwards again full tilt.

Rizolvir's Underdark-honed survival instincts kicked in as fast as Enserric's warning flared up in his head, urgent like a white-hot poker.

"Duck!"

_Down!_

"Prone!" and apparently, Entreri's Calimport-honed ones were just as good as his.

The two combatants followed their own advice and threw themselves flat on their stomachs as the golem suddenly exhaled a cloud of poisonous stinking gas.

As he went down, Rizolvir let go of his off-hand longsword and in the same smooth movement, he gathered a handful of his piwafwi and used it to cover the lower half of his face. His red eyes, already watering up from the toxic smell, scanned frantically his surroundings.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Artemis rolling swiftly away from the gas cloud, his wicked sword and jewelled dagger firmly clutched in his hands and a look that screamed bloody murder firmly etched in his features. Getting away wasn't what worried the drow, though: he was fairly positive that the vapours would float higher than he was and that his current position was safe enough.

No, what he was worried about was the still immobile Yria Ingerd standing as a perfect blank for the now clearly furious golem – could a golem be furious in the first place? –, and in the ideal place for breathing the rapidly expanding noxious greenish cloud. His eyes were seeking her petite frame out even as his mind raced trying to come up with a way to dissipate the effect.

His brain was coming up blank, though, and he was starting to think seriously of getting up, going to her, and bodily removing her from harm's way, when he felt it and knew that it wasn't necessary.

He was all too familiar with the blast of hot air suddenly sailing over his body not to recognize it immediately as the fireball it was, so he forgot his worries and wasted no time in rolling away from the estimated area of explosion as fast as he could.

Well, _that_ would surely disperse the gas, if nothing else.

Scrambling up to all fours, Enserric still caught in a death grip in his hand, Rizolvir's eyes blinked in the aftermath of the spell going off, his vision showing white dots for a moment while the heat faded and the shockwaves dissolved into the once again still air.

_That fireball settled down awfully fast, don't you think?_

The drow would have liked nothing more than to dismiss the sword's comment, but he had the sinking feeling that it was right.

The spell had a feeling to it incredibly similar to the one fired off a while before, back in Beregost's crypt, and Rizolvir didn't like it one bit.

Blinking madly away, his ruby eyes traced back the path of destruction to the small sorceress. The thoroughly pissed off look on Yria's face confirmed it. Once more, the destructive force of her spell had been sucked away.

But even as he looked on, the girl's eyes went from angry to horrified, and Rizolvir knew that they had found where all the magic was disappearing to.

It must be said that it was not Yria's intention to fire off in the first place, though, but when she came about again and realized that her mental fireball had somehow morphed into a very real one, and when she saw the huge golem standing there and looking quite the challenge, she wasn't sorry at all.

She might have tweaked it down somehow if she had known that the spell would run into a highly flammable gas, yes, but she didn't regret her actions right up until the moment where the smoke cleared and she saw who was the magic thief.

The golem was glowing fiercely, the runes that covered its aged surface white hot and fluctuating as if swimming on a molten pool of allay, and slowly sinking down like remnants of a wreckage in the sea until they could be seen no more.

There was just polished brass, and a half-reformed stump of a forearm.

Yria gathered arcane energy for a raw power volley, but she held it back and, when the golem's glassy eyes turned to her, dismissed it. The chance that the construct would absorb the spell and repair itself completely was too great, even for someone as crazy as herself.

Only problem was that, once deprived of her magic, there wasn't much she could actually do to bring down the rather formidable opponent, and this was worrisome. The girl considered a retreat – a _tactical_ retreat, of course, – but she didn't really know how to high tail it.

And besides, she hadn't found her prize yet, so it was completely out of the question. She had to suck it up and deal with the golem.

If only it was that easy, she thought when the golem turned her into its bull's eye – no pun intended.

At that particular moment, though, Yria Ingerd was being targeted by two sets of more or less equally outraged looks. One, obviously, belonged to the minotaur golem, and was keeping all of her attention. The other, much subtler and perhaps more deadly, belonged to Entreri.

The Calishite assassin was indeed thoroughly infuriated. For starters, he could smell his own singed hair and clothes, even though he was protected by a supposedly fire-resistant piwafwi. Then, there was the fact that the same blast that had thus damaged him had also healed an enemy that had been quite difficult to damage in the first place.

And to add insult to injury, he _still_ didn't know why he was fighting said enemy to begin with.

So Artemis shifted his glare from the sorceress in order to glare at the oblivious Jarlaxle…

… And found that the extravagant dark elf wasn't there anymore.

There weren't many things in the world that could leave a dumbfounded Artemis Entreri on their wake, but this situation certainly accounted as one of them.

Part of his mind kept track of the dark elven wizard, Rizolvir, as he tirelessly danced around trying to keep the golem at bay, but mostly Entreri's senses scanned the area, trying to find Jarlaxle – or, if the mercenary leader was indeed gone, a clue so as to where he had gone… so that he could personally hunt him down and kill him later.

It wasn't till the third swept that he found what he was looking for. There, almost merged with the wall, was the semisolid profile of a humanoid figure with an outrageous hat that could only belong to one person.

Artemis threw a look over his shoulder to the raging fight, and saw that the elf was holding his ground. More or less.

Perhaps a bit heavier on the 'less', but Entreri had something else to do, and if Rizolvir needed help that badly, then there was always the elf's companion to fall back on.

Never mind that said companion was a bit too close to 'shocked' to provide much help.

The assassin slipped into the shadows, and silently and quickly, he moved around the messy battle to the other side of the wall. Then, unseen like a light breeze, he stalked forwards, timing his move carefully before pouncing with a feral grunt.

He got a hold of Jarlaxle's upper arm.

The profile on the wall shifted, and Entreri thought that the great hat had moved and was now staring straight at him. He stared back twice as hard.

But there was not enough time for a glaring contest, as the sudden and imaginative drow curse drifting to his ears made clear, so Artemis planted his foot on the wall and started to pull.

Unsurprisingly, the great hat started to pull back just as hard.

Entreri heard more cursing, more rattling of steel, and a fairer and angrier voice twirling the Weave at his back, but he didn't let any of it distract him. After all, even if the midget sorceress was back in casting mode, there was no way to guarantee that the results would be adequate.

Hells, there was no way to guarantee that the golem wouldn't become even more powerful thanks to those spells.

So the assassin put all his strength into pulling, and smirked darkly when the orange tip of a feather emerged from the wall, followed by a wide purple brim and, finally, the pouting face of a very familiar dark elf.

"What are you doing?" a bewildered Jarlaxle asked, as if he really didn't know. "Stop playing around and go help them!"

Jarlaxle tried to withdraw into the wall once again, but Entreri was not even phased by his urgent tone and struggling body. The man methodically ignored the trashing going on behind him and kept his steady hold on the dark elf.

"_You_ go help them, Jarlaxle," he said, in between rough pulls. "This is _your_ grand scheme."

"There's no need to be so picky about possession, is there?" Jarlaxle made an affronted face, and Entreri used the distraction to get the upper half of the drow out into the corridor.

"I'll remind you of those words when we find whatever treasure you're looking for now."

The drow rogue looked shocked for a moment, and then let out a nervous laugh.

"Ah, I see you're learning quickly…"

A storm of small magic missiles illuminated the passageway turned battlefield, followed closely by the thunderous cacophony of large chunks of rock dislodging from the walls and ceiling.

Apparently, the human woman had discovered that magic could indirectly damage the construct. Judging by her approach, in the process she seemed to have forgotten that they were trapped in a crypt underground, because she was pretty close to collapsing the vault upon the golem.

And unfortunately, upon them all.

With the shaking and rumbling of the place, though, Entreri managed to make Jarlaxle stumble out of the wall and back into the fight.

What good would that do, now, the assassin didn't really know.

"Well? What now, genius?" apparently, neither did Jarlaxle.

Entreri didn't bother to answer, and simply shrugged. The spells used on him before were starting to wear off, and his whole body was suffering from the exertion and abuse it had been subjected to.

The man looked past Bregan Da'erthe's mastermind to the still fighting Rizolvir. The other drow's movements were noticeably slower, and, while his boost was still keeping him up, wet splotches of blood were already visible on his person.

When the crippling pain of the magical after-kick caught up with them both, and the group ran out of melee fighters, things were going to get ugly.

"I don't know and I don't care, Jarlaxle. Waggle your fingers and disintegrate it, or pull creepy Kimmuriel out of your hat and have it sent to another dimension, or something. You got us in this mess, you find a way out before that crazy woman buries our bodies in this stinking place."

Jarlaxle had to acknowledge the very real danger the makeshift group was in. In fact, that was the very same reason why he had disappeared into the wall, but now that trick was ruined and he had to devise another solution. His agile mind perused all his possibilities in a few heartbeats, before the threat of being buried alive became all too clear, and then he resigned himself to losing yet another of his tricks.

But he could not resist the temptation to throw a dart to Entreri before parting ways with his beloved artefact.

"Well, as I recall it wasn't me the one activating the _oh-so-obvious_ trap that teleported us here…"

The drow rogue didn't stick around long enough to hear Entreri's answer and, pulling a button free from his vest, he nimbly inserted his body in the ongoing fighting. No magic volley followed his movement, and Jarlaxle had to assume – correctly – that Entreri had gotten Yria to stop casting for a moment.

Using his many centuries worth of familiarity with twin-sword duelling, he managed to keep himself out of trouble and to predict the other drow's movements, well enough that when he threw his button to the floor, the extra dimensional hole it opened swallowed the golem and missed Rizolvir – by a hair's breath, true, but drow always worked with minimums so it was just right.

Jarlaxle quickly pitched forwards and, uttering a command word, closed the hole and turned the whole pocket back into a button. As it imploded and its confines pulled together, a puff of noxious gas escaped into the corridor, but then Jarlaxle picked the button up, the artefact held, and everyone let out the breath they had been holding.

"Well," the drow said, pouting and turning the small thing between his long fingers, "that was one expensive thing the Illefari have made me expend. They'd better make up for it."

But, on tacit agreement, the battered group moved back to the spherical chamber, in opposite direction to all of Illefarn's hidden treasures, because even the more enthusiastic members – namely, Jarlaxle – had to admit that it was time to call a break and do some wound-licking before prodding any further.

It wasn't a retreat, of course. It was a strategic manoeuvre to strategize. And to try and find some answers since they were at it.

Just in case the golem had an older brother figure lurking about.


	7. Reflection and introspection

A/N:_ Once again, I present you the newest chapter to the story. I have been calculating, and it seems as if we're just crossing the middle line of the story. This chapter (the title is bad, I know… sorry?) is supposed to be the consequence to the last one, and its full of interaction. It should help the characters to "mature" and move forward, or at least that's the idea… Tell me how it works? This is the first chapter I update with the new review button… so can I ask for all your opinions on the story to celebrate? (makes hopeful face) Well, I'll shut up now… Read and Enjoy!_

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**Reflection and introspection**

Yria Ingerd was a staunch believer in communication. She was the kind of person that actually thought that most situations could be improved by talking through them, and she had the silver tongue to go with such a mindset.

Many people who encountered her thought that she was a happy-go-lucky girl, but getting her own way actually involved a lot of effort, and not a small amount of technique.

Ever since she was a kid, she had developed the ability to make other people state that the sky was green if it so suited her needs. She could make people want something useless, and make them part with what was truly important. She could exchange trivia with a dragon, convince a medusa to get a new hairstyle, depress a ghost over its immortality and get a permanent discount from a Red Wizard of Thay.

But Yria Ingerd had never met someone as intent on staring at the wall as Artemis Entreri, and it was proving to be a test even to her own perfected skills.

It could be argued that he was doing some trap searching, or simply trying to find a way out of the godsdamned crypt, but the assassin had been just sitting there and staring at the same spot for quite a long time.

And he hadn't even _blinked_.

"So… it's been a fine day after all, hasn't it?"

It was almost humiliating, to be forced to make such inane attempts at conversation, but the man in front of her seemed to be truly intent on avoiding her amiable attempts like the plague.

This time around, her efforts earned her but a withering glare before the whole focus of the Calishite was shifted to the wall once again.

Okay, so it had been a pretty stupid comment, but at least she was trying.

Yria sighed, and wondered how long till the Jarlaxle fellow was done fixing up Rizolvir. At least, that gaudy drow could keep a civil conversation. It annoyed her when people didn't even bother.

"You do realize that a piece of rock is rather undeserving of your animosity, right?" she asked, innocently. "Besides, I don't even understand why you're so pissed! It is unhealthy, didn't you know that?"

Entreri's dark frown darkened further, and he allowed his emotionless gaze to fall on the girl stubbornly sitting besides him. The dimwit didn't seem to be able to pick a hint and realize that he wanted to be left alone, so he tried to convey his feelings with his powerful stare.

Somehow, all of his murdering intent went right over her.

He wondered whether she was made of the same stuff of Jarlaxle, or else she was actually that oblivious. The assassin hoped fervently for the second option. He wasn't sure he could cope with two such eccentric individuals.

"You really have got the wrong attitude all about you," her voice interrupted his despairing thoughts, and made him renew his glaring efforts. "A little bit of positive thinking goes a long way, you see. If you really want to accomplish whatever it is you're doing here, you should show more enthusiasm!"

"I don't want to be here in the first place," Artemis surprised himself by blurting out after all the prodding, and the result of his slip was an increase in his morose mood.

Yria, however, was unaffected by this side reaction. She blinked and cocked her head to the side, like a kid facing a particularly puzzling jigsaw.

"Huh?" she asked, intelligently.

The assassin only stared at her, blankly, and she felt the need to elaborate on her question.

"But, what do you mean, you don't want to be here? Why are you two here to begin with, anyway?"

I don't have a clue, Artemis thought bitterly while resisting the urge to aim a pointed look to Jarlaxle. Instead, he mustered a stony expression and answered in the most collected voice he could pull off:

"That is none of your business."

"Whatever," anyone back in Calimport would have recognized the tone to be one reserved for deadly threats, but again the young sorceress proved to be too dense to heed the warning and back off. "It must be something interesting, taking into account that we're entering a complex built by one of the ancient empires… I don't know why you're not thrilled, yourself. There's lots of adventure and opportunity ahead. Me, I am here looking for some stupid relic… it is a job for someone else, but I'd never have accepted it if the chances of finding spectacularly interesting stuff along the way weren't so high… I mean, can you even imagine what can be hidden in this place? Well, and of course the pay itself isn't bad, but that barely registers when compared to the potential treasures lying about…"

Entreri gave her an incredulous look. What the hell…?

"I don't care," he said, fixing the now babbling woman with his empty gaze and hoping against all hope that she'd squirm in fear and simply go away.

"Gee," huffed Yria, Artemis' negative outlook finally getting to her, "I was only trying to be nice, you know."

"I don't appreciate the attempt."

"I saw that. You're going to give yourself an ulcer if you keep that behavior up, though," Entreri arched an eyebrow, not caring on how well those words reflected some of his own recurrent thoughts, and she crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Where would you rather be, then?"

Entreri finally blinked.

"Pardon?"

"If you don't want to be here, then obviously you would prefer to be somewhere else? Where is that?"

The assassin's frown turned more questioning and less angry.

Where would he rather be, indeed.

It was not as if he missed Calimport and longed to go back there. Yes, it was true that the closest thing to a friend he had had, Dwavel, was in that city, but though he had sometimes thought of her, he hadn't really missed her.

He had been too busy keeping up with that damned dark elf, and trying to survive his newest ideas for adventure and profit, to feel any sort of nostalgia towards that city; a city, on the other hand, that had turned into a much more hostile place for him as of late, and to which he would be smart not to return in a long, long time.

Another side effect of the great venture that had left him without a nominal home was that he no longer had a hobby: he no longer could spend hours planning Do'Urden's perfect defeat, because the righteous ranger was already dead. It had been messy, and it hadn't given him quite the closure he had wanted to obtain, but the infuriating elf's demise ensured that he didn't want to be somewhere else running after his own personal vendetta.

Of course, he could always strike up a new personal vendetta against the foolish wife of the hypocrite Cadderly, but doing that would involve gazing upon Spirit Soaring again, and that was something he'd rather avoid if he could. The grandeur and splendor of the place, instead of making his soul lighter, only succeeded in provoking his bile to rise up his throat at the sight of yet another so-called good god's mask, so the Snowflake Mountains were probably listed among the last places he wanted to ever be.

It seemed to Entreri that he knew where he didn't want to be, but that he could not answer the simple question of where he would rather be.

The assassin surprised himself then thinking that perhaps it was not so bad to be where he was. No matter how hard he tried to deny it, the road suited his needs just fine: there was danger, and the chance to improve himself was no small enticement for him. Deep down, Artemis was quite convinced that he had a quite ill oriented love for life-challenging situations that would allow him to emerge all the stronger.

In a way, he supposed, it was similar to Jarlaxle's love for gambling his all on over-the-top gambits, sometimes getting richer and more powerful from the experience, and some other times getting just more experienced.

The similarity was surely the reason why Artemis didn't mind, or was learning to enjoy, the companionship of the colorblind dark elf. Jarlaxle had plenty of goals to provide him with the adventure he wanted, and he was pragmatic enough to keep Jarlaxle's goals in the realm of possibility.

But he couldn't very well keep the drow's schemes in check if said drow didn't let him on to his new plans. Entreri was constantly hauled along in the dark, and that was what truly bothered him. He could just see another great venture like the Crystal Shard looming around the corner, and he wasn't going to learn of its existence until it bit him in the ass.

The Calishite decided that he didn't care about the _where_, and that he would be quite happy to be in Dordrien if only he knew the _why_.

Obviously, he couldn't just go and confess that.

"So you're a mercenary then? Quite the small band you and your lover have, uh?" he refrained from doing something as inane as sighing, and resigned to some minutes of awkward conversation in order to ward off further questions.

The sorceress didn't have a ready quirky answer to that one. In fact, she didn't eve seem to have a slow, plain answer: the only thing she could do was sputter unintelligibly and turn a thousand shades of red.

She might have been a fast talker, but her brain collapsed under the implications and refused to produce an answer.

For starters, she couldn't understand how Entreri could think that Rizolvir was her lover. Her _lover_. They weren't even… He wasn't quite… She didn't see…

Yria couldn't so much as finish her own sentences in the privacy of her mind, how sad was that?

She and Rizolvir were adventuring companions. They could even be considered as friends, though she didn't know all that much about his past – there was such a long past to cover when it came to elves! But they were most certainly _not_ lovers!

It was true that Rizolvir had become an important part of her life, as of late. She felt incredibly comfortable around him, and she could blurt out whatever was on her mind knowing that he wouldn't think badly of her, but it was not the same.

If she really had to, though, she could admit that the male elf was… handsome, in his own way. He was not as dainty and aloof as some other drow she had met, but it only made it easier to be by his side. She guessed that the word would be attractive, but that didn't mean that she _was_ attracted to him.

Which of course wasn't the same as saying that she didn't _find_ him attractive, because in all honesty, she _could_ probably confess that she did. From there to being his _lover_, though, there was a long way.

Being lovers was not about being comfortable with or attracted to each other, it involved… all sorts of _other things_.

Yria felt her face grow hotter, and realized belatedly that her breaths were becoming much too hiccupping for comfort.

She realized with no small amount of embarrassment that she was _hyperventilating_.

"We're not lovers!" she managed to exclaim, her voice an octave too high to truly belong to her.

She huffed and crossed her arms over her chest, protectively. She had to _stop_ thinking about _that_.

The assassin's attempt to steer the inquiries away from his person not only kept him clear of questions, it also kept him safe from the bothersome socializing involved in conversation altogether.

Artemis Entreri smirked.

o O o

The orb was supposed to work quite quickly, or at least that's what the other dark elf had said, but to Rizolvir it felt like an eternity worth of painfully long moments was scurrying by. The spellsword wondered for a minute whether the other male was doing it on purpose, but soon enough he had to acknowledge that the sensation probably came from the smug look on Jarlaxle's visible eye, and from his general uneasiness, and not from the real amount of time passed.

Perhaps it was somehow logical that the mercenary leader would do his best to make him uncomfortable, but Rizolvir thought that it was hardly deserved. Taking into account that they both were drow, he knew better than to expect fairness and he knew that he was bound to do something to grant him the other male's wrath, but he hadn't done anything of the sort yet, except perhaps helping out in the whole saving the day deal. And quite frankly, he wasn't planning on anything either.

He was probably slacking off.

It was all due sorely to one Yria Ingerd, that much Rizolvir knew. When he was still part of House Zarosta, he wouldn't have tried to protect anything but his own life. If that had been the case in the particular scenario that they all had just survived, Jarlaxle wouldn't be fixing him at that moment: best case, he would be looting the bald elf's corpse, and no matter the outcome, he wouldn't be harassed by an unknown drow, wouldn't be depending on someone so thoroughly undependable, and wouldn't have to suffer through said individual's bouts of curiosity.

If it weren't for Yria Ingerd, Jarlaxle wouldn't have an embarrassing question to ask in the first place, the smug look would be gone, and surely the ordeal of healing would be much less taxing on his poor nerves.

Because the particular question that had started it all had been a simple, "don't you think you should tell her?"

On Jarlaxle's defense, it must be said that he hadn't meant any ill. He was far from being a drow with goodly pretensions, but he didn't thrive off pain and suffering, like many of their race were known to do. He was merely an overly curious person, to the point that it could almost be considered a disease: Jarlaxle's guilty pleasure was knowing what was going on around him at all times.

And there had been a great many things to know about the unlikely pair of mercenaries found in Jarlaxle's and Entreri's way, from the sheer reason to their presence in such a hidden ruin, to the ties liking the hot tempered sorceress to his brand new lieutenant. Why she was teamed up with a drow, what kind of drow it was, and what was their relationship were only a few of the many, many things in between that Jarlaxle had every intention on finding out about.

Why? Because, if he knew those answers, he would be better able to predict their behavior, their responses, and even the possible uses he could find for them in the future. The rogue had learned that relationships, and interaction with others, were the weak points of many humans, and weaknesses allowed for manipulation.

If you asked someone else, though, they'd probably say that it was because Jarlaxle was a first class snoop.

Whatever the case, the drow was determined to find his answers, though he had no hurry whatsoever, and neither did he care much about the order in which he acquired them. That was why he just kept his eyes and ears open, and waiting until he could grab any good opportunity to satisfy his need for information.

Good opportunities like having some alone time with an injured Rizolvir, with no interruption of any kind until the warrior mage was fully healed again.

And besides, Jarlaxle would be lying if he didn't admit that he was intrigued, as a drow, by the way in which the other male had chosen to sustain physical damage in order to defend the small sorceress. That was weird behavior all right, and it usually only happened when the threat of the whip was looming close enough on the horizon, if at all.

Jarlaxle had started his prodding in the most subtle of manners, like the true mastermind that he was. Through some careful observation, he had come to some amazing conclusions. For example, he knew that he was not facing a Do'Urden replica, that Rizolvir's moral compass was most likely frozen in place, and yet, somehow, the other drow seemed to have developed a level of caring for the human girl that usually was privy to surface dwellers.

Then, the rogue had completely botched the situation by asking the rather obvious question of "why don't you tell her about your feelings if they are so obvious".

Jarlaxle had asked because he knew that he could probably use Yria to manipulate Rizolvir up to a certain point, but Yria seemed completely oblivious in regards to the former House Zarosta smith. He had figured that if such obliviousness were to be eliminated, he could possibly use Rizolvir to manipulate Yria, which would leave him in a power position all around.

If a third party were asked, though, they'd probably say that it was just Jarlaxle's meddlesome manners coming into play.

Whatever the case, the truth was that the question was hanging in the air, and that it was as if the temperature around the two dark elves had gone down a few notches.

"I have no idea whatsoever what you might be talking about."

Of course, that was ridiculous. Of course, Rizolvir knew. He was even vaguely disturbed by the fact that the other drow's words seemed to echo the usual advice he got from his talking sword, so he most certainly was aware of the meaning behind Jarlaxle's question.

But if the male was soft and meek in the face of his Mistress, he was still every bit a drow when the sorceress' back was turned, and he had no great qualms about showing it.

Jarlaxle smiled and twirled the healing orb in his long fingers, his visible eye twinkling slightly in mischief. There was no way the leader of Bregan Da'erthe would succumb to the attempt at intimidation made by such an amateur.

"It is fascinating, the range and depth of feelings that humans can experiment in their short lives, isn't it? If you have gone as far as to make your heart sensitive to them, it is only logical that you would share this amazing feat with the object of your affections, don't you think?"

Rizolvir schooled his body into perfect stillness, and showed no sign of registering the insult that had just been issued.

_Iblith_? Human trash, him? Hardly.

He was not noble of birth and he had been too busy surviving to thrive much, but there was a huge difference between the drow and the short-lived races.

Besides, even those things had changed. Since the Valsharess mustered her army, and he was forced to join a rag tag group of rebels under the guidance of a High Priestess of Eilistraee, his non-descript life had taken a sharp turn.

Funnily enough, everything had started with a small sorceress with a huge attitude sauntering into the rebel's camp. And it was true that somewhere along the way he had started to care for the petite woman, who was a mixture of raw, ruthless power and of an approachable, easy-going personality, but he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he hadn't been rendered weak because of those foreign feelings.

He knew that once he had stopped battling against them, he had become that much stronger. A return trip from the Hells wrestled from the grasp of the gods themselves was proof enough for him.

And, in his mind, it also proved well enough that Yria was no normal human, on her part. The mind of a drow and a gentle soul seemed to have gotten mixed up in her human heart, and the unusual combination redeemed the woman from _Iblith _status as much as ebony skin and snow white hair could, so he was not ashamed of what he felt.

But he was not going to let anyone interfere with his personal affairs, either. His dedication to his Mistress would be understood and appreciated when the time was right, and no one but he had a say in the matter.

Not his talkative sword, and certainly not Jarlaxle.

"I appreciate your observations, _abbil_," he said, inclining his head a fraction of an inch without breaking eye contact.

And his eyes, cold and hard, stayed locked in Jarlaxle's as he nonchalantly dealt his own verbal blow.

"It is a great honor that you so choose to address my own concerns before the increasing rift between you and your own companion. I sincerely hope betrayal shall not result from your generous detour."

Jarlaxle's countenance revealed nothing, but mentally his eyes opened like saucers. So the amateur had some backbone.

The rogue leader first reaction was of outrage for the younger drow to dare to meddle in his own business. The second was contempt for the absurdity of the claim. The third was doubt, cast upon the previous contempt. And the fourth was much too messy to be easily identifiable, but it smelled suspiciously like worry.

Bregan Da'erthe's leader was very aware of the fact that he was yanking Artemis Entreri around, and while a small part of him wondered whether there was another way to go about it, he mostly believed that it was not the case. Entreri was a tool, and tools were to be used to the best of their capacities. No one in their right mind would tell a sword why it had to cut, or ask a key to open a door. Artemis was the same: he accomplished what was expected of him, and that was it.

Right?

Jarlaxle's fascination with all things under the sun and below the earth gave him the knowledge to deal with most situations, but unfortunately for the drow it also made him aware of the habits of other races. He was no stranger to concepts such as love, trust, or friendship. It was only that he had never found them a place in his life, for to thrive in Menzoberranzan such things were a definite must-not.

The problem seemed to be that these purely theoretical concepts had a way of mixing up with the usage of tools concepts, and sometimes Jarlaxle had the irresistible urge to ask Artemis for his help, instead of just disposing of it.

A fleeting thought of how the man had gone so out of his way to help him with the Crystal Shard incident came to his mind, and Jarlaxle poured all of his willpower into the healing orb, suddenly wishing to get it done and to join the other two companions.

He had never considered that the sword could turn against its wielder, or that the key could melt into scrap at the most inconvenient time if it kept being shoved into endless locks until the damned spellsword mentioned it, and he didn't appreciate the insight in the slightest.


	8. Touring Illefarn

A/N: _Hello again, everyone. Here's the next chapter… personally, it's the one I like less – some parts remind me of my former writing style… the long, long, looong descriptive parts… - but I thought it was kind of important for the plot to have a small break. I hope I was more or less able to salvage it in the end, and that my dear reviewers will stick with me through this one as well! And now, on with the show! Read and enjoy. And leave your comments, as always.  


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**Touring Illefarn**

It was truly a grave for the past that they had stumbled upon. In many ways, it was like having been stolen back to an age long gone and forgotten. It was a place full of wonders that no longer had room in the world, but that still ruled over Dordrien.

The tumulus had obviously not been conceived simply as the last resting place for the departed: there was an intention to the architecture and to the decoration, a promise of remembering and of honoring. Once the entrance chamber had been left behind, the complex became an airy structure of high vaulted ceilings and wide spaces, to the point that it was easy to forget that it was underground. It seemed a mixture of the aloof elven spirit, or the transient human nature, and of the resistant dwarven heart.

Dordrien was small and unimportant in the grand scheme of the Ancient Empire, but still the main, single corridor was wide enough for four men to walk abreast comfortably, and the ceiling was easily twice as high, arching gracefully to form a solid barrel vault which had withstood two millennia in perfect condition and which seemed able to withstand unperturbed forever more. Adding to this sense of solidity, there were thick columns evenly spaced, like giants that took the weight of the tomb upon their shoulders…

And, against all expectations, there was a huge equilateral arch-like window in the space between each pair of supporting columns. The wooden frame had been treated in such a way that it had survived the flow of time, the dry and frail ebon having lost all its shine but otherwise looking as if decades and not centuries had gone by. Beyond this openings, mimicking a construction in the surface, countless tassels alternatively showed soaring skies and portrayed the inhabitants of the nameless city that had stood over Dordrien.

No matter how many centuries since the crypt had been sealed, its magic still worked as finely as it had when it had been cast: the dust-covered corridors would light up with an unearthly glow whenever the group advanced, ghostly spheres embedded into the columns lazily coming to life as the visitants made their way into the mausoleum, and whole sections of the walls would come alive with warm light, as if the rising sun was shining upon the depictions of the daily lives of the last inhabitants of the Illefarn empire. Elves, dwarves, humans; they all stared calmly out of the vivid mosaics as they accomplished their chores, and only their anachronistic clothes and the foreign utensils they were putting to use told the story of the ages that had past.

It was an underground cathedral that the Illefari had built, not to honor any god but their own memory.

Somehow, though, the intruding group seemed to be having a hard time enjoying it all. Probably it had all to do with the less than resting night they had just gone through: Entreri had been too distrustful to actually fall asleep; Jarlaxle had been too exited over treasures to do any Reverie; Rizolvir had been too wary of the sleepless assassin to relax an ounce; and Yria, who usually slept the sound sleep of the innocents, had had to deal with too many weird thoughts and dreams to truly rest. So yes, they were healed and ready to move, but they weren't the most energetic bunch.

The long time that it took them to actually start appreciating their magnificent surroundings should be proof enough.

"Say," Jarlaxle did a quick double take as the four of them walked past a dwarven maiden getting water out of an ornate well, "these mosaics are awfully shiny, aren't they?"

Entreri bit back a sigh. He had already noticed, but he had hoped against all hope that nobody else – especially not Jarlaxle – would pay close attention to the artworks.

"Uh?" Yria stopped and turned back to Jarlaxle, following his eyes to the shimmering tassels. "Why, yes, they are. The artisans must have used high quality…"

The sorceress voice trailed off as she locked eyes with the drow mercenary, and realization seemed to dawn on them simultaneously.

"… Paint?"

Their voices echoed in the high ceiling, and two uncannily similar grins started to stretch across their features, like two sides of a rather distorted mirror. Entreri felt a shudder run down his spine at the sight: it was unnerving, and some sixth sense of his alerted of endless woes to come shortly.

"This is truly a reason for… uneasiness," the soft lilted voice of Rizolvir brought the assassin out of his trance, and he saw that the warrior mage had a weary look similar to his own.

But he suspected that the other's motives for alarm were far greater than his own: while it was a blow to one's sanity to face _two_ Jarlaxle-like people instead of the genuine one, the Calishite couldn't begin to wonder how it was like to discover the startling similarities between one's love interest and… well, and Jarlaxle.

Even though Entreri had never been in love, the sole idea was enough to leave him shaken, and he almost extended a sympathetic look to the spellsword. Almost. Thankfully, the figures of Jarlaxle and Yria bursting into motion out of the corner of his eye were enough to bring him back about.

Artemis Entreri didn't do sympathetic, and that was it.

He scowled deeper at Rizolvir to further emphasize this point, but the former smith no longer paid any attention to the human: head slightly cocked to the side, he seemed to be taken with the way both their companions fought over the richest spots of the mosaic in front of them.

After having been so close to show weakness, the assassin was being thoroughly ignored.

Oh, how he hated drow…

Though he had to admit that it was darkly amusing to see Jarlaxle, the cunning mastermind, forgetting all about the existence of scores of other mosaics in his antics to reach the emerald and lapis lazuli tassels before the young and energetic human did.

Artemis cracked a small smirk, and decided to enjoy the show before pointing out the obvious.

"It seems to me millennia have failed to bring down this crypt… but it's not going to survive a few hours with those two on the loose," he said, without realizing how close he was to joking until he heard the low chuckle the comment elicited from Rizolvir.

And even then, he was too surprised by the lack of malice and the richness of the sound, so unbecoming of a drow, to give it much thought anyway.

o O o

Half an hour had passed. Entreri was sitting on the shadows created by the magical lamps' waning light, and lack of sleep was starting to catch up to him. Though he was far too disciplined to allow his head to loll to the side and snore it off, he had already pushed the racket surrounding him to the back of his mind as 'non-threatening', and he was dangerously close to start taking cat naps in his hiding place.

He was saved from taking any regretful decision when the sound of light footsteps registered beyond the pushing, shoving, and scrapping noise he was being currently subjected to, and the assassin looked up to see the approaching figure of Rizolvir.

The dark elf crouched by his side, and looked worriedly at the quarreling pair.

"Is it truly worth the effort obtaining such small gems, I wonder?"

Entreri shrugged vaguely and decided not to answer, knowing that the real question was whether or not they would attract the attention of any kind of guardian, and, if so, how they would defeat it.

Jarlaxle didn't have an endless supply of dimensional pockets to dispatch the lethal golems of Illefarn, and to think that there might be another such creature lurking around made him uneasy.

"I have ventured to the end of this corridor," the drow continued, breaking Artemis' somber line of thoughts. "There is a single chamber, with a single corridor leaving it. I have not found immediate threats, and other than the magic required by this tomb to function, my examinations have not revealed anything of interest."

"If I wanted to know that, I'd just have gone ahead to investigate myself," the assassin commented dryly, not in the least interested in talking.

_And here you were, trying to be nice for a change… Really, these humans have no right whatsoever to criticize drow!,_ the sniggering mental voice of Enserric commented inside Rizolvir's head.

The dark elf, for his part, gave a mental shrug. The man before him was dark and withdrawn, even by his own society's standards. He still was on his best behavior, anyway, partly because it was clearly more advantageous than alienating the obviously powerful mercenary pair and partly because he had caught a glimpse of teamwork once and he was curious to explore the tactical potential of the idea.

"_His loss, then," _he replied silently, a small smirk etching on his ebony features. _"This only means that I am going to interrupt his companion's intercourse without his opinion on the matter."_

The devilish sword chuckled at that. It knew that the show the one-eyed drow had put up with Yria had really gotten under its master skin, and it only found amusing to try and gauge how long until the spellsword finally gave in and took a defensive stance in front of his female partner.

To Rizolvir's credit, his endurance had greatly surpassed the best of Enserric's bets, and even then he had managed to come up with a legitimate reason for pulling those two apart.

And if there was any reason to doubt this legitimacy, it was nullified upon seeing the looks of wonder on Yria's face when the former smith guided the group away from the partially mutilated mosaics and into the chamber he had mentioned to Entreri.

Entreri groaned upon entering, and understood that he should have listened to the drow's comments, and that the two of them should have brainstormed together a quick way around the room.

As if it hadn't been difficult enough with jeweled mosaics, now there was _this_.

_This_ was a room which couldn't really be called a room, anyway. It was too big for that, truly worthy of being at the end of the cathedral-like corridor they had just walked along. And that was not the only difference to be found when comparing the two places.

The light here was that much brighter. Almost harsher, one could say, but there was something on the way it reflected off every surface that made that particular adjective, while truthful, somewhat unbefitting. In any case, the most spectacular thing were precisely the surfaces the light was falling upon, even beyond the fact that they had just stepped in the middle of an underground park.

Jarlaxle had been expecting the park to appear, because it figured in the report he had gotten from Kimmuriel when he had garnered all the information about the Wailing Diamond, but even he was taken aback by the imposing beauty and sheer magnitude of it all, and the tree that served as center for the whole ornamental complex of Dordrien's crypt was unexpected to say the least.

The rogue leader had never before seen such a lively likeness to a weeping willow, and much less one made out of solid nacre. From its long, bent branches, scores of leaves, long and slender, hung immobile, sparkling blue under the artificial light and waiting for inexistent air to toy with them.

How the thin shards of sapphire had been attached to the thread-like nacre upper branches, that he didn't know, but he was sure that some Matron Mothers back in Menzoberranzan would pay a sweet amount to know the exotic technique. Even if it was only to pervert it with their own twisted sculptures later on.

He moved forward and reached out, and ran his slender fingers along the leaves. There was no trap, no underlying curse, no powerful spell to keep thieves at bay. There was nothing, even though the riches exposed were enough to turn most honest citizens into robbers.

Jarlaxle chuckled, touching the branch again and listening to the merry sound of precious stone clinking against precious stone. They were living different times now, indeed.

Not that he was complaining.

From what the dark elven mercenary had learned, the Illefari had had a very particular way to deal with the dead, to the point that the empire's graveyards were more like gathering or relaxing places where one went to make amends with one's past and to think about one's future… And sure enough, there they were.

The low benches to be found, arranged in some mystic pattern he didn't know and couldn't care less about, certainly took a background position upon first entering, but they were works of art in their own right, and surely they would look amazing anywhere else.

For example, they would look great in his personal quarters in Bregan D'aerthe, he thought wishfully. Jarlaxle sighed. Oh well, he wasn't planning to go back to Menzoberranzan anytime soon anyway.

Besides, he wasn't the only one having those thoughts, if the look on the small sorceress' face was anything to go by. Given the way she was carefully trying to find a way to disassemble the thing so that it fit in Rizolvir's bag of holding, he was willing to bet that his eye hadn't deceived him, and that certainly the intricate wires that made each bench up were silver.

Best luck with that, he thought with a huge grin while he started pulling leaves free from the decorative three.

Jarlaxle had plucked three before it occurred to him that they were lacking the most important thing ever in an Illefarn crypt: the dead people.

"Nothing of interest?" Entreri's hiss drew Jarlaxle's attention, and he saw the assassin walking with purposeful strides up to a very stoic looking Rizolvir. "You didn't see _that_? What kind of search were you doing?"

Curious, the mercenary followed Artemis' quick pointing gesture.

Oh. So they had found the dead.

White must have been trendy when Dordrien was put to use, though Jarlaxle personally disliked the dull color and couldn't understand why anyone would want to be buried in it, much less everyone.

Because everyone was wearing the same plain, boring white. There they were, the inhabitants of Dordrien, the last Illefari: lying at his feet, seemingly asleep with their eyes closed and their hands crossed upon their chests, their faces upturned to the high vaulted ceiling.

Simply put, they hadn't seen a single tombstone before because the whole floor was the tombstone. It had been built with what looked like quartz, and when one walked around, one couldn't avoid stepping upon the unperturbed bodies that lain a scant couple of feet below.

Jarlaxle understood what Kimmuriel had meant when he had said that the dead in Illefarn never were really gone.

"Of course I saw that," the calm, albeit slightly offended tone of Rizolvir answering the Calishite brought Jarlaxle's attention back to his present group, and with a great sigh of defeat, he stepped away from the fortune that hung from the tree reap for his taking and headed to the bench where they were all reunited.

"And you didn't think it was interesting enough to be mentioned?" the assassin was almost spitting venom, obviously not having liked the surprise of looking down to find a dwarven corpse looking right back.

"I was under the impression that corpses were a common occurrence in crypts, regardless of the origin," the spellsword answered matter-of-factly. Jarlaxle detected the light mockery, having used it plenty of times himself, but the subtlety was lost on both present humans.

"What would happen if these corpses rose now? Still a common occurrence?" Entreri asked, his own voice going back to composed and deadly serious. "Such risks are the reasons behind scouting ahead."

"Ah, but I seem to recall that you were not interested in the least on my findings. What brings a change about, I wonder?"

Blood was about to hit the river. Jarlaxle needed to lighten the mood, and to do it quickly.

Luckily, the human sorceress had caught up on that fact as well, and she beat him to the punch.

"Who cares? The only important thing is that I can no longer concentrate on looting with Old Granny looking at me like that…"

Her tone was light, and her comment succeeded on making at least Rizolvir back off from his aggressive stance, but there was definitely an uneasiness to her tone.

Totally understandable.

"What say you that we check the sanctum chamber first, and then decide whether to loot or not on our way back?" Jarlaxle asked. If they were going to get a mass of undead running them out of the graveyard, they could at least run after taking possession of what they were looking for in the first place.

"Well… It sounds like a plan to me!" Yria's face lit up with excitement. In her mind's eye, she was already halfway to recovery from the financial ruin brought about by her latest adventure.

"We're settled then… Artemis, dear, why don't you take the lead now that we cannot possibly know the horror that lies ahead? Surely the ancient sages of Illefarn have sprinkled the way into their most holy of places with all kinds of dangerous and terrible traps of demonic intent, long forgotten today and whose discovery is only possible by the hands and hawk-like eyes of a man of such great talent as yourself…!"

Jarlaxle smiled as the assassin huffed and stalked away in the middle of his speech. Sometimes it was so easy to push the man's buttons and make him move in the appropriate direction…

In all actuality, though, the mercenary leader knew quite well the 'horrors' that laid beyond the park. They were carefully explained and detailed in the report Kimmuriel had made for him, quite a while back, when the venture was still on its planning stage.

Hells, they were the sole reason he had brought Entreri along to begin with.

o O o

When Artemis Entreri finally slipped into the innermost chamber of the crypt, he was ready to see a trap springing from his very shadow.

Paranoid, perhaps. Over the top, definitely not.

A few meters into the second passageway they had found a beautifully carved door separating the more 'mundane' part from the 'holier' one, and it all had been a road down to hell since then.

One – more – thing could be said about Illefari: they knew traps. The assassin had had to disable just a handful of the traditional, mechanical ones, and even though they had been tricky, lethal, and in a particularly good condition in spite of the time passed, they were nothing compared to the less conventional inventions of the builders of Dordrien.

There had been the glyphs, the delayed spells, the mobile walls and the illusory doors, to name but a few of the many, many things Artemis had had to deal with in the last hour or so.

And the real corridor was no more than twenty yards long…

That was why when the small group scurried into their destination without encumbrance, they all thought there was something seriously wrong. Four nervous pairs of eyes danced along the walls, checking the twelve marble statues eight feet tall each that kept eternal, mute guard over the room; and four minds tried to decide whether they seemed to be susceptible of moving anytime soon.

When a few minutes later nothing had happened, Yria, who clearly was the less disciplined of the group, felt her attention wander. She sighed in incipient boredom, and let her eyes roam a bit more freely…

And she saw it.

There it was, supported by a bronze pillar in the very front of the room, directly in front of a statue that surely depicted the god of death. Not the current one, of course. Who had it been? Cyric? … Possibly Jergal? It didn't matter much. The important thing wasn't the deity, but the fist-sized diamond lying under its nose.

She squeaked.

Jarlaxle perked up.

Rizolvir tensed.

And, of course, Entreri groaned.

I should have seen this coming, thought the Calishite. Why _else_ would that damned dark elf have dragged them to this godsforsaken place? His instincts were starting to rust if he hadn't smelled 'powerful-slash-dangerous item' half a mile off.

Well, there were _some_ things he still could predict.

"No one moves an inch," and obviously, it was Jarlaxle who had to stop middle step, in a position which, had Entreri not lacked the disposition, could have been found funny.

"I am going to get that," he continued, his voice leaving no room to arguments. "You all stand watch and keep your eyes damn well open. First one I see slacking…"

He let the threat hang in the air, and started to creep forwards. He knew there should be some kind of trap, barrier, or impediment. Artemis only hoped that he would be able to see it on time.

… Though as he advanced on the pedestal and failed to see, or trigger, his untimely demise, he started to worry.

Upon reaching the diamond, he did his cursory inspection, and then repeated the action up to three times. The Calishite saw nothing.

Feeling a bead of sweat running down his brow, Entreri reached out to carefully touch the gem, fully expecting some necromantic discharge to leave him dry on the spot. Or a powerful guardian to be summoned into the room. Or the twelve statues to animate and attempt to smash him.

Artemis really was not expecting to see that nothing happened.

He gave it another five heartbeats before deciding that he couldn't just hover there forever, closing his gauntleted hand upon the diamond and lifting the surprisingly heavy trophy from its nest in the low pillar.

_If_ there was a trigger in there, and the best assassin of Calimport couldn't see it, he was going to get quite pissed, he just _knew_ it.

But there was no lightening to strike him down, and no curse uttered by the dead god of the dead. Everything was still, and Entreri allowed himself to relax his knotted muscles just a little.

He turned to his companions and smirked.

"Well, that was…. rather anticlimactic, wasn't it?"


	9. That's shiny That's mine

A/N: _I hope this chapter makes up for the last one… There's character development, and there's a fight, which is what I'm worst at writing – I think – and I can't help but wonder if someone will be surprised by the events? Let me know your opinions!

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**That's shiny… That's mine!**

Entreri turned the huge diamond over in his hand. Even through the gauntlet, he still could feel that it was no ordinary ornament, but some kind of powerful artifact.

He had the funny idea of switching it to his other, unprotected hand.

Immediately, an eerie sound assaulted his ears.

Of course, just as immediately the whole group was on guard, throwing worried looks around the chamber. The sound came from everywhere, and it was ghostly enough that it took a few moments to locate its source: the precious stone laying in Artemis' hand.

And upon closer inspection, there were ephemeral traces of red reflected in the gem.

What the…?

Entreri frowned, and examined the item more closely. Just what had Jarlaxle tried to get his hands on, this time? A quick look towards the mercenary leader confirmed that he was looking as smug as they came.

But it was not Jarlaxle who broke the expectant silence.

"Hah! There it is! That's the artifact I was hired to retrieve!" and Yria, having put two and two together, reached out.

Jarlaxle gulped. Oh dear. So that pair was after _his_ prize? He hadn't really thought that they were seeking the exact same thing. But that wasn't what worried him the most.

How was he going to bargain for it without admitting that he had come to the crypt purposefully, that he had used Artemis, and that the diamond was rightfully his?

A moment of panic registered on Jarlaxle's mind. His garnet eye locked with the dark gaze of Entreri, and the assassin just cocked one eyebrow.

Then, slowly and deliberately, he started to offer the fist-sized diamond to the sorceress.

The world slowed down as Jarlaxle jumped forward and held onto the Calishite's extending arm, pulling it – and the gem – away from the human girl.

"Wait up! That's mine!" he said, and he felt like slapping himself just as the words left his mouth.

He had entered Artemis' perimeter without a trouble, and the man had let him establish physical contact, even though he hated it. The damned assassin had been _testing_ him. Artemis Entreri had known that the diamond was the reason behind the venture, and he had dared to call him, Jarlaxle, on it.

And Bregan D'aerthe's leader ignored why, but knew in that one moment of regret that he had failed the test.

Jarlaxle blinked. It was not something he was willing to deal with at the moment.

"You see," he explained, all charm turned on to the max as he smiled his best businessman smile, "this diamond is the reason I came to the crypt. According to our Future Market agreement, it must fall under my share."

"Too bad," Yria smiled back, all innocence and sweetness. "I was hired to retrieve this artifact, therefore it must be mine under the same agreement. And because I informed of the nature of my search first, I got preference."

"You didn't inform naught, that I recall."

"Oh, but I did. Didn't I?"

All eyes turned to a silent Entreri, and the man, his face expressionless and arranged in a careful mask of blankness, turned his intense stare to Jarlaxle. The dark elf could swear that there was a hint of vindictiveness on those eyes.

"She did," he said, simply. "She told me while you healed up that other drow."

No matter how much Jarlaxle wanted to scream that he could have given him a heads-up on the matter, he knew that such a comment would be met very, very badly.

So he looked for a loophole instead.

"She told you specifically that she was here to get the Wailing Diamond?" the rogue demanded, wondering on the other hand who might be after the artifact – besides himself.

Entreri went to answer, but he was cut short by the small sorceress.

"Wailing Diamond? What Wailing Diamond? That's obviously the Bloody Kiss!"

Jarlaxle blinked at Yria.

Yria blinked at Jarlaxle.

They both stared at Entreri's hand, still trapped between them and still holding the item.

"Nonsense!" Jarlaxle was the first one breaking the silence. "I've done my research and I've checked my sources! This is the Wailing Diamond without a doubt!"

He flinched as he realized that he had just confessed to a great deal of planning, and therefore a great deal of leading along in the dark, but the drow didn't have time to dwell on it.

"I've been hired and teleported here, and my employers have done their research as well! You can keep the tree on the other room; this diamond is mine."

"This is not even what you're looking for! _This_ diamond is mine!"

"It is not what _you_ are looking for! I'd have been informed if there were more than one artifact hiding in here."

"Which brings us back to _my_ point of view: _you_ are obviously mistaken."

"Oh, come on, _look_ at it!" Yria said, getting tired of the argument and grabbing the diamond to shove it under Jarlaxle's nose. "It obviously is the Bloody Kiss!"

"No, you _listen_ to it!" Jarlaxle's hand moved quick as lightening, getting a hold on the gem and pushing it to Yria's ear. "It clearly is the Wailing Diamond!"

Entreri looked from one quarrelling person to the other. Worry was starting to dominate over his feelings of betrayal and his pent up anger towards Jarlaxle. He had the definite feeling that it was not safe to be caught up between the mercenary and the sorceress when something as shiny as the diamond in his hand was involved.

Carefully, as one behaves around a wild wounded beast, he started to back off, never taking his eyes off of the show of his traveling companion and the opinionated little girl trying to convince each other of the nature of the artifact.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a look of pity in Rizolvir's face. Honestly, though, after this last trip he found that he could not make himself scowl back with half the venomous intent that he should.

As a matter of fact, so many things had happened and he was so tired that he didn't even stop to realize that he was thinking of that silent drow as the only _other_ sane person in their rag tag group.

The silent drow, on his part, was busy doing his very own thinking. Rizolvir wasn't exactly surprised about Yria's reaction. He still hadn't figured out _why_ she wanted to get rich, but he knew that nothing could stand between her and her reward, if said reward was big enough.

In his mind, there was no doubt that if Jarlaxle insisted on possessing the artifact, a fight would ensue: because of that, the spellsword was silently going over his prepared spells, over Yria's favorite tactics – not that she had much use for tactics beyond 'burn it down' – and over neutralizing Entreri and the other drow before any of them could harm his Mistress.

Which was the tricky part.

The two mercenaries had proved to be powerful enough, and Rizolvir was not thrilled at the idea of fighting them. After all, he knew better than to trust Jarlaxle to be just what he appeared, and he had seen first hand Artemis' ability in the very drow-like fighting style of using two blades.

That was when he had looked to the man.

A pity, really. He had actually been looking forward to fighting besides that human male – who couldn't be too much of a piece of trash, if the Jarlaxle fellow considered him a companion –, that assassin who had managed to master such a superior way of combat.

_Don't go rushing things yet, pal. Your girl hasn't decided to start the fireworks yet, _Enserric's nasal voice commented just then inside Rizolvir's head.

"_Do you believe that there is a chance for this encounter to end without violence?"_ the dark elf asked, moving slightly to the side in order to avoid being caught if she did decide to start the show.

_Who knows, _and the sword sent a feeling suspiciously similar to a shoulder shrug his way,_ we're talking about a chick who managed to make a Devil Lord cower in fright, remember?_

Of course he remembered. No matter how many lifetimes he had, or how many centuries till he died, he could never forget.

She truly was his Matron Mother.

_What have I told you about thinking of her like that, pal? You're never going to get laid if you go on like that,_ the sword said, taunting its master on his one and only weak point – and enjoying it immensely.

_What you need to do is get over yourself and kiss her and show her a bedroom trick or two… _Rizolvir's right hand clenched almost spasmodically upon Enserric, and the sword felt the dark elf's normally calm mind surge at him in a torrent of rage that promised 'chamber pot'.

The mouthy sword chuckled, and decided that it had pushed its master far enough. _What I don't get, though, is why our dear Yria is oh so interested in him. _

"'_Him'?" _Rizolvir forced himself back in check, and sent a questioning look to the sentient sword sheathed at his hip.

_Him, it, whatever. Oh, come on, pal, don't tell me you can't smell it from here. That diamond has written 'outsider' all over it. _

All personal matters were pushed to the back of Rizolvir's mind, and the drow felt a cold shiver run down his spine. From past experience, he had come to hate outsiders. In all their colors and shapes. He focused his senses on the longsword, but whatever it had detected was too faint for him to pick up on.

"_No, I am unable to detect this presence. What kind of an outsider are we talking about?" _he asked, knowing that for all its nasty habits, Enserric did have a fine nose.

_Not coming from Hell, if that's what worries you. Neither from anywhere Higher: lacks the distinct stink. It actually is a very boring smell, pal. Boring as a 'rock'._

"_Boring as a…" _Rizolvir didn't really enjoy riddles, but he was starting to get the hang of them. _"Earth elemental?"_

_You keep getting better and better, pal. Yup. It feels like the grandfather of all earth elementals is in there. _

The warrior mage let out a colorful string of curses in his native tongue. This finding complicated everything. The specialist in transmutation in him was particularly worried at the revelation: often times, drow captured elementals and used them as power sources to decorate or even sustain whole structures. It was a costly process indeed, but if Illefari magic was truly that advanced, then it was a definite possibility that the Ancient Empire used the method regularly.

And if that was the case, then altering the power source…

_The whole crypt could come undone, yes. I see you got yourself a working brain. But then again, perhaps nothing would happen. Ah well. I guess we're about to find out anyway. _

"_What do you mean?"_ the drow was startled out of his inner conversation, and his eyes immediately locked upon Yria's figure.

With Entreri's withdrawal, the pushing and shoving and shouting had been steadily increasing. Obviously, neither of the two rivals had wanted to really fight the other, but they were even less inclined to let go of their artifact. So the verbal match had escalated, each coming up with more baffling and elaborate and loud arguments, and displaying a more exaggerated and flamboyant body language.

Which eventually had led to Jarlaxle accidentally knocking the diamond out of Yria's grasp, and failing at catching it himself.

The Wailing Diamond, or the Bloody Kiss, spiraled downwards in slow motion, turning over itself as gravity pulled it down, down, down…

And then it crashed upon the hard floor, and it splintered, and its low lament turned into an ear shattering scream –

And there, almost on top of Jarlaxle and Yria, appeared the biggest earth elemental any of them had ever seen.

"Sweet Selvetarm," Rizolvir muttered, frozen by the sigh of a veritable mountain of solid quartz coming alive.

But the spell that held him in a trance broke when the behemoth turned its head, molten rock flowing out of its articulations, and swung its massive arm crashing its fist over a certain sorceress' head.

Perhaps Rizolvir was not as resourceful as Jarlaxle, or as skillful a warrior as Entreri, and he didn't have the magical power of Yria. But he was a drow. A very driven drow. And he would do anything to achieve victory.

"_Enserric!"_

_Yours to command, Master, _the nasal voice answered his direct summons in the back of his head, its tone laced with anticipation.

Enserric was a devilish blade for reasons well beyond its annoying talking habits. Its conscience and knowledge were certainly useful abilities, and its preternatural sharpness added to make a powerful weapon indeed, but those weren't the real powers of the plain looking longsword.

Its most fearful feature was the ability to detect and latch onto its opponent's soul and to drink it up, and to use the absorbed life force to heal up its wielder in a way that was similar to Entreri's infamous dagger. Contrary to the dagger, though, this power didn't need Rizolvir's will to kick in, and the sword's blood thirst was a constant in every fight.

There was another power, though. One that did require a direct command to be activated, and that the spellsword had never used before.

The secret was that Enserric's hilt was just as thirsty as its blade.

Through the mental link established between weapon and master, the sword pulled long and hard on Rizolvir's soul. As the dark elf's life and stamina fled out of the hand that was tightly clenched around the iron pommel, Enserric's sharpness increased and its blade pulsated with destructive power.

The disciplined warrior mage didn't falter, and in spite of the pain his heart didn't miss a beat. Furthermore, he smiled as he watched the simple blade turn the coppery red of spilt blood, his ruby eyes reflecting the desire to kill that emanated from the sentient blade.

Elemental king or not, his opponent was _dead_ as far as he was concerned.

Meanwhile, Yria was recovering from the surprise and doing her best to evade the attack. She had called forth the Spellstaff, one of the precious few items she had managed to salvage from her last adventure, and had activated its defensive powers with a thought just in time for the gigantic fist to hit the displaced image created by the spell instead of her own body.

Still, the elemental's movement created a rush of hot air that nearly scorched her lungs, and it was enough to make her realize that this fight was going to be tough.

But she would think about fighting later. First, she needed to get some distance between that thing and herself, or she wouldn't be able to cast. And, what the hell was she supposed to cast anyway? Rock was difficult to burn, difficult to cut, difficult to blow up… Damn it, not only was she engaged in close combat, but she was probably going to have to destroy the beast the Bloody Kiss had turned into.

She could just feel her reward slipping through her fingers.

Entreri's fingers, across the room, weren't clutching imagined gold but the very real and solid hilts of his weapons. His dark eyes examined the anthropomorphic figure of the elemental, and he cursed when he saw that there were no soft spots. Not that it should come as a surprise. After all, a solid mass of stone was bound to lack crippling points where one could stick a dagger and be done with it.

The man looked to the entrance of the chamber, the long corridor leading out and hopefully back to the surface. What all his training as an assassin, and all his experience in Calimport, dictated he do now was hightail it while the outsider was too busy to notice. There was nothing to win if he stayed, and it was not as if killing the being had any _purpose_ beyond sheer survival. Retiring was indeed the most tactically sound approach… and after seeing Jarlaxle's earlier behavior in a fight, the drow could not find fault in being left to his own devices.

That was why the certainty that he didn't want to back off alone bothered Artemis so.

The Calishite didn't even want to consider why, nor did he have the time to do it, but more than anything, the idea made him feel disgusted and cowardly instead of smart and self-sufficient.

So Artemis Entreri allowed himself a moment to growl in frustration, and then slipped forward silent as a shadow. He still wasn't too sure where he was going to hit, but since he was going for the fight, he would at the very least avoid approaching from under their foe's flailing arms.

The area under the massive, flailing arms of the elemental was occupied anyway. That was exactly where Jarlaxle was.

The drow rogue certainly hadn't been expecting the gem to break, and he was quite pissed for not having felt the creature trapped within. Even as he danced lightly on his feet out of harm's way, he added another item to the ever growing mental list of requests he was planning on presenting to Kimmuriel as soon as he got the chance.

He needed a more elaborate way to detect enchantments and summons, because obviously his current array of trinkets was not enough.

Jarlaxle reached into his belt and started fumbling something free. He didn't care much about the what, exactly, as long as it was something that could be used to attain some advantage. His sticky goo-producing wand was shaping up to be a good object in his mind: hopefully, it'd hold the thing steady until he remembered how earth elementals were dealt with.

His searching fingers didn't close upon the slim stick, though. A small, marble-like item found its way to his hand just as he was starting to curse his bottomless pockets, and the discovery gave Jarlaxle pause. It was an item he knew well.

If he pulled it free and smashed it against the floor, a orange puff of smoke would appear with a rather loud 'bang'. And when it cleared, Jarlaxle would be in a tight situation no more: he would be comfortably sitting in the couch that adorned his personal quarters, back with Bregan D'aerthe.

He knew for a fact that Kimmuriel would be happy to see him and to relinquish leadership of the mercenary band back to its original owner – the psion hadn't complained aloud, but Jarlaxle knew his former lieutenant well enough to understand that he was fed up with bitchy Matron Mothers and endless paperwork, and that he wanted nothing more than going back to his books and his experiments.

Ah, well, there was no helping it.

He was still curious about his new companions, and besides, if he left now, all the diplomacy lessons he had been imparting on Entreri would probably be wasted to the world. And that was a definite no-no, so Jarlaxle sighed, let go of the small marble, and kept searching for some wand or other.

The drow rogue added yet another item to the Kimmuriel to-do list: an extradimensional _organized_ space was sorely needed.

As a matter of fact, if Jarlaxle succeeded in his fishing quest it was just because the elemental was temporarily distracted and it stopped trying to hit him. When he whipped out the magical stick, though, he couldn't help but be surprised as to why: one of the beast's knees was almost gone.

The rogue blinked, and before his very eyes another chunk of smoking rock was dislodged and crumbled to the floor under the continued attack of one grim looking Rizolvir. Smirking, Jarlaxle waited until the outsider reared out to attack, and when its balance was worse, he aimed and fired.

The green glob flew and stuck the healthy leg to the floor, and it managed to trap one of the creature's long arms to its side.

It wouldn't hold long, but it'd have to be enough, Jarlaxle thought as he pulled out a second wand.

But the elemental, as any wounded, trapped creature is wont to, seemed to double is efforts to break free and destroy its enemies, and the drow cursed when he aimed and tried to conjure a streak of lightening.

The spellsword was doing such a great job of keeping the outsider occupied that Jarlaxle couldn't hit the one without stringing the other along.

And though under normal circumstances he would trust the innate spell resistance of all dark elves to keep the other male in one piece, his eyes widened as he took in Rizolvir's state.

While the warrior mage's movements were sure and purposeful, and while each blow had devastating effects, the drow himself was battered, bleeding from a thousand cuts that surely were generated by the flying shards of stone, and his left shoulder hung useless from its socket.

There was no way Rizolvir could survive a direct lightning strike. As it was, it was questionable whether he would withstand the next swing from the elemental's free arm.

Jarlaxle pondered frantically what do to, but he was timely saved from the dilemma by a solid wall of ash caging the outsider from the other side. All doubts aside, Bregan D'aerthe's leader barked the command word and sent the lightning forth, a wide smile parting his lips.

He was happy to see that Entreri had joined the fight, and he knew that the assassin would have used the distraction created by the ash to relocate out of harm's way.

Which was exactly what he had done.

Artemis Entreri had been surprised into non-action when he saw Jarlaxle actively fighting and not leaving them all behind to clear the mess, but then he had grinned and had jumped into the fray himself.

There was a reason why Jarlaxle and he were a team, and desperate combats like this one proved it quite nicely: used to each other's habits in an uncanny way, Entreri had seen the minimal hesitation hidden under the great plumed hat, and, seamlessly, he had acted accordingly.

Waving Charon's Claw in a deadly dance, he had produced two walls of ash that had effectively hidden the elemental's target from view, and in the same smooth movement he had dived and rolled to the side, a surprised Rizolvir close behind.

The pair had emerged, back against back, to the other side of the curtain just in time to see Jarlaxle's lightning blow off a good fragment of the humanoid's shoulder.

Emitting a high-pitched keening noise, the whole creature had shook and trembled, caught completely off guard by this enemy who had lurked hidden behind, and, having lost sight of its previous foe, it had tried to turn its attack on Jarlaxle.

But it had met with Charon's Claw and with Enserric, both fighters dancing and twirling their weapons in unison, the one creating openings and the other exploiting them with deadly accuracy.

However, there was a price to be paid for every destructive slash that Enserric was landing, and Rizolvir was paying it dearly.

Though part of the elemental's life force was going back into the spellsword, and it was keeping him alive and fighting, the sword was taking much more than what it was giving, and the strain on his soul was barely contained by his will.

So it was only logical that he would get sloppy, and it actually surprised him how long he had managed to keep the fight up.

Entreri felt his partner wavering, and he tried to take the combat elsewhere when he anticipated what was going to happen. But it happened too fast, and there really wasn't much room to move the outsider's focus to, and when Rizolvir's knee sank to the floor the earth elemental's fist was close behind his white-haired head.

Yria, still cloaked under a displacement spell and crouched to the side, saw her dark elf companion fall while her mind was still trying to catch up with the fast developments of the fight. She was not in danger, but still she froze in fright.

The small sorceress was snatched back to another adventure and another plane, to a memoir where she laid defenseless in the snow, a killing behemoth looming above her and a plain looking longsword standing in the path of death.

But she had no longsword. Neither did she have the strength to wield it. There was nothing she could do in such a melee.

She looked on and felt a fist constricting her chest painfully. She whished with all her might for him to just move it, though it was quite clear that he couldn't… not when there was so little space to feint, not when the strength of the enemy made it so impossible to deflect.

Yria went over the spells she knew how to cast, fear and worry making her mind go numb as she realized that she still did not know how to destroy the earth elemental, much less without destroying her friends in the process.

The thought was so all-encompassing, that she didn't even take notice of the arcane power gathering around her free hand.

She saw the elemental's fist just a hair's breath away from connecting, and vaguely she felt something salty and stingy on her left cheek, and she wanted to cry out for it to stop.

What came out was a power word she hadn't even heard before, and as her hand clenched, an infinite number of cracks opened on the outsider's body, which froze mid-swing.

The earth elemental screeched, its inner fire extinguished, dust flowing out of its massive body that suddenly resembled more a mountain of pebbles than solid rock.

And without stopping long enough to consider just what had happened, Entreri was leaping forward and burying Charon's Claw to the hilt into the outstretched arm of the outsider, the appendage being turned to grainy sand when confronted with his blow.

There was another ear-shattering sound, and the whole looming presence just collapsed. Banished back to its plane, hopefully never to come back.

Artemis' eyes swept up and met Jarlaxle's, the dark elf's serious look contrasting sharply with his colorful attire. The drow snapped his wrists, shrinking the twin silvery blades that had delivered the fatal blow back to their knife size, and then shot his trademark smile to the assassin – the one that said 'another job well done', even though they had just destroyed the artifact that he had wanted to acquire in the first place.

However, the smile was short lived, as a much deeper rumble shook the crypt, overlapping with the gurgling sound of the elemental's final moments.

"Don't tell me that we just eliminated the one thing powering this place and keeping it intact?" the roguish mercenary wondered aloud, knowing full well the answer when the rumble transformed into tremors, and pieces of the fresco decorating the ceiling started to fall. "Uh-oh, this will never do… we'd better hightail it, Artemis!"

Artemis sighed, irritated. He'd already figured out that much, quite a while sooner than anybody else. But of course, Jarlaxle just had to go and _issue_ the order, didn't he? That damned fellow just couldn't _not_ lead.

The assassin would follow, of course, but only because getting out was what _he_ wanted to do from the very beginning. Jarlaxle just _happened_ to be going on the same direction, and that was all.

Oh, how he hated drow.

But funnily enough, he hauled the broken drow that lain behind him onto his shoulder before starting to run after Jarlaxle and Yria without even stopping to wonder why he should do so.


	10. Onwards

**Onwards**

Rizolvir felt his consciousness leaving the blissful dark where it had been dwelling for an unknown amount of time, and through his still slow reasoning, he knew he was waking up. A dull pain, which he was unable to locate, greeted him and he tried to quiet his mind, and to ease himself back into the non-feeling vacuum where he had been floating before.

Unfortunately, that was not to be.

_Ah, how I love the taste of dark elf blood in the morning… We should really make a repeat of this sometime soon, pal._

Rizolvir forced a groan past his sore throat, and lamented that the sword hadn't been lost in the crypt.

_Aw, don't be like that, _the sentient sword chuckled, amused. _I must admit, though, that I am amazed that you even remember the crypt. That's some amazing mind you've got, recovering so quickly. _

For once, Enserric didn't sound _too_ sarcastic and Rizolvir had to wonder if it was truly that incredible a feat.

"_It is not my clearest memoir, but I do tend to remember my fights,"_ he said, trying to move his left hand to assess damages.

_You remember your flights as well?, _the obnoxious sword taunted, and his left fingers twitched.

Honestly, he had been quite oblivious of the ending of his venture, but Enserric's comment made him aware of the desperate escape from the Illefari tumulus.

"_That is going down as 'strategic retreat'," _he said with a mental smirk. _"It does not qualify as fleeing if there are no enemies to give chase."_

The dark elf couldn't form a clear recollection of what had transpired between going down and going unconscious: he had only a grip of flashes and images of rushing forward as the world around him – around them – fell to pieces, but he was quite positive that they had been pursued by nothing but masonry.

_Ah, whatever makes you feel better, pal._

"_Of course. But I wonder," _Rizolvir racked his brain, but the elusive glimpses he could catch weren't definitely enough to satisfy his curiosity, _"I cannot help but wonder… How did we abandon the crypt in the end?"_

Enserric, helpful as ever, sent some half-formed memories his way. They were incomplete, and more about feeling than about seeing, but they got the message across: Jarlaxle was more than he seemed to be, for the rogue had managed to get a portal up and going. Straining a bit, Rizolvir understood that it was the original Illefari one – probably the one used by the golem to move to the upper, modern crypt – and the fact that the other drow had been so quick in finding and activating it gave the spellsword some pause.

More than he seemed to be, indeed.

_Aren't you going to ask about your sorceress, pal? I'd have never thought you'd wonder about technicalities before her well being…_

"_She is fine," _Rizolvir dismissed the sword's comments with a slight frown. He didn't know why, but… _"I would know if she were not."_

_Would you, now? Ah well. You're no fun. Anyway, I'll let you know that women like to be inquired after, even if they are all right. _

The former smith sighed. There it went again… But truth was, Enserric wasn't being as indiscreet as it was used to. And, even though a normal female would probably skin him alive if he so much as asked a question, let alone one about her condition, Yria was by no means normal. He had already learned that she enjoyed talking and that she liked to hear his opinion, even if it was not asked for. Perhaps she would not mind him caring about her physical status.

It was sad that sometimes that thrice damned scrap of metal did have some good advice.

_Hey, my advice is always good and helpful. It's you who has a thick head and doesn't see it the right way from time to time. _

Rizolvir sent a dubious look the sword's way.

Then, he had the most awful sensation as the blade's conscience laughed at him and actually shoved him awake.

The drow's body was resting on a bed, not too comfortable but not too poor either, and what should have been excruciating pain had faded into a barely noticeable soreness. Somewhere deep down, he knew it to be the work of Jarlaxle's magical healing orb.

However, Rizolvir didn't have time to appreciate this blissful estate before his sensitive ears were assaulted by the worst screeching sound ever. His hands jerked, and he froze, not knowing if he should reach for his weapons of for his suddenly aching head, before recognizing the noise.

For the longest time, it had been the most common noise in his life, really. Right up until he died and joined Yria, he had always been surrounded by the sound of steel on stone.

It would be almost funny, if it weren't so sad, to think of the number of hours he had spent sharpening weapons, he thought as he shifted his gaze to the side to locate the source.

Ruby eyes met gray ones, and the sharpening stilled for the barest moment in acknowledgement before starting up again, rhythmical, methodic.

"About time," Entreri said, boredom dripping off of his every word. "There's just so long I was going be waiting here."

Rizolvir gave a twisted smirk as he sat up carefully, and he reached up a hand to brush his off-white hair out of his face.

"You must be losing your edge if I am waking up without a knife in my back."

The assassin stopped his sharpening and ran his thumb along the dagger's blade to test it, his own lips curling up in the dark beginnings of a smile.

"Jarlaxle would hate for me to ruin what his magic has fixed," Artemis said, with just a hint of a threat.

And that short exchange was about all the two people needed to come to an understanding.

Because no matter how hard the both of them tried to deny it, beyond their race and their pasts and their goals, their souls weren't that different. Ruthless and driven, knowing better than to ever rely on someone else, they both had been caught like flies in a spider web and towed along by big, pushy, overwhelming personalities that seemed to be intent on changing the foundations of their lives and the world itself. Scary as that thought of change was, they found that at some point they both had started going along of their own free will, and that they were enjoying every minute of it.

It was enough of an understanding.

"Yria?" Rizolvir asked.

"Next room down the corridor," Artemis motioned with his head to the slim wall separating the two rooms. "If you're going to her, tell her that we're having dinner soon. That idiot Jarlaxle said he would be back as soon as the sun were down."

"I will," rising on slightly unsteady legs, Rizolvir walked to the door and leaned heavily against it for a moment, catching his breath. "So, why?"

The drow hadn't turned when he asked the question, but it was not really necessary. He could _see_ the deadpan expression in Artemis Entreri's voice.

"For sanity's sake."

Rizolvir actually laughed at that, the sound eerie and unnatural coming from a dark elf's throat, but still rich and surprisingly sincere, echoing in the small room once the spellsword grabbed Enserric and slipped out.

Sanity… personally, he wasn't so sure that he had much left. His mind must be running dangerously low on such attribute if he was actually considering to do what he was doing.

He knocked on the next door, and forced the tension out of his shoulders when it opened to reveal one Yria Ingerd.

The small sorceress had obviously taken the time to wash up, and she had changed out of her bright blue attire – and though the new pants were an inconspicuous black, the array of reds and flaming oranges that constituted her tunic made up for it. Her usually unruly hair was standing up in more frizzy angles than ever, as if she had dried it after her bath with a flame arrow spell poorly aimed, and Rizolvir couldn't help but answer to the big grin she was aiming his way.

"Hey!" she stepped aside and motioned for him to come in, and he did.

After carefully pushing away all thoughts and memories of what could happen to an insolent male who visited uninvited the spider's lair.

"Yria. I see that you are fine?"

Which was actually the truth. As he had told Enserric earlier, he knew in his gut that the human girl was unharmed, but he had expected her to be pissed at the loss of the Bloody Kiss if nothing else. Instead, she was smiling – a real one, not the scary sweet curling up of the lips she did whenever she was about to turn a wide area to ashes – and seemed honestly jovial.

"Why, sure! It takes more than that to take me down! How about you? No offense meant, but you were looking quite crappy when we made it to the surface…"

And she had been worried. Not that she was going to tell him, but when she had turned around to see Entreri dragging him along, she had believed that he was gone. That was a feeling she didn't want to explore any further, as she didn't want to dwell on the relief she had felt when Jarlaxle had pulled out his healing orb and had fixed the worst of the damage before deeming them all fit to make the trip to Beregost to rest.

It was almost incredible that her drow companion was standing before her, looking none the worse for wear except for a few shallow cuts adorning his exposed forearms.

"It has been taken care of," his leveled voice pulled her out of her somber thoughts, and she was surprised to find ruby red eyes looking at her own.

Her surprise was clear in her face – she was way too expressive – and Rizolvir felt his breathing accelerating. When Yria simply held his gaze, her smile growing wider if anything, a seeming content feeling floating in her otherwise ordinary orbs… The heady feeling the warrior mage got was almost equal to that of winning a battle.

So it was true that she liked to be inquired after, and, furthermore, she didn't seem to be adverse to eye contact. She was quite the special one, and the drow wondered for a moment just how else she was opposite to everything he had known before.

_So keep investigating and find out! _

"_No," _and for once, he couldn't muster up the heart to be angry at Enserric. _"I believe I have pushed my luck quite far enough for today." _And aloud, after making sure that his voice would come out steady enough, he added,

"Artemis Entreri informs me that we will be dining soon. Apparently, Jarlaxle is to join us shortly."

"Okay," it took a moment for the sorceress to process his words, having been a bit off balance herself, but she pulled back together soon enough. "Just give me a minute! I need to tame this a bit before coming down, or people will mistake me for a harpy."

Rizolvir cocked his head to the side. It was true that her hair had too much of an attitude to be considered normal at that moment, but surely it didn't make her comparable to a harpy. As a matter of fact, he liked that hair: as everything else about the petite girl, it was nothing like the lustrous silk of his dark elven race. It was wild and opinionated and thick, very much like Yria's personality. And it seemed to have just as much fight in it, if the way she was wrestling with her own mane was anything to go by.

The drow sighed deeply.

Perhaps he was not quite done pushing his luck yet, he thought as he made his way to her.

…

_Pal, you're just amazing. You've got the girl, the room, and the bed…_

_And you just _comb_ her hair?_

o O o

Jarlaxle took off his great purple hat, turned it a few times in his hand, and plopped it right back on his head while he waited for his wine to arrive and for his companions to come down from their rooms.

He had told them that he was going to collect his reward, and that was true: after all, Entreri and he had gone and slain a monster in the local crypt. The fact that it had never come out and it was not to blame for the death of the local farmer they had been investigating in the first place had little to do with the reality that they had accomplished a job of some kind resulting in benefits for the community, so it was only fair that they got money in exchange.

Besides, what the villagers didn't know couldn't hurt them, and surely they would sleep better thinking the death of their neighbor avenged.

But of course, that had not been the only thing the mercenary leader had been doing.

After finding a somewhat secluded spot, Jarlaxle had pulled out his special summoning contraption and had called forth Kimmuriel – in his personal opinion, he had been refraining from doing so for long enough already, and on the other hand, the list of things that he wanted to ask of the psion kept growing and growing, and if the meeting didn't take place soon, he was at risk of forgetting something or other.

Kimmuriel had answered the call diligently, and if Jarlaxle hadn't known his own lieutenant better than that, the perfectly schooled features of the other dark elf could have fooled him into thinking that the psion was at ease.

Which was not the case: Bregan D'aerthe's current leader was weary of the motives behind the unexpected reunion, and so Jarlaxle had taken it upon himself to relax him with a gift first thing. Of course, he had mentioned – albeit in passing – that said gift was a _mostly_ intact Illefari golem, and that it _might_ be in a somewhat aggressive mood when it was pulled out of the extradimensional space where it was stored.

When Kimmuriel had given him an incredulous stare, Jarlaxle had merely brushed it off. Mutual resources for the band, he had said, and the psion had left it had that, tucking the button away for later examination. At that moment, Jarlaxle could have moved on to telling him all the new items and accessories he wanted, but that would have been too simple.

And it would have left room for the other drow to complain on Bregan D'aerthe being too busy to cater to his every childish need, and of course that was something the rogue would not have, no matter what.

So the renowned mastermind had decided to ask for information first, articles later.

And sitting down back in the local inn and sipping his glass, he couldn't help but smirk at the memory of his brilliant move. Kimmuriel had been so surprised at learning of Jarlaxle's new acquaintance, of her connections to _his_ lieutenant and the Valsharess and of the possible implications that by the time he had realized just how many things Jarlaxle had requested, he was already back in his quarters in Menzoberranzan, stranded with a constant nagging to his curiosity and a huge extra workload, all courtesy of one smart Jarlaxle.

Now, to sit back and wait, thought said rogue as he craned his neck to catch a glimpse of Artemis Entreri coming down the stairs to sit with him.

Jarlaxle turned his mind back to matters at hand, and braced himself to defend against the accusations that he knew were coming.

So when nothing came forth and the assassin simply sat there drinking from his own mug, Jarlaxle started to worry.

"Why, Artemis, you're particularly silent today. Working on the 'brooding stereotype', perhaps?" the drow tried, and the man fixed him with a glare.

"Why, Jarlaxle, you sound particularly foolish today. Thinking of the fastest way to get your throat slit open?"

Jarlaxle chuckled, more to ease himself than out of real amusement. Some kind of aggressive answer was better than no answer at all, though.

"My, you've strung more than five words together in one sentence! I am impressed," he commented, trying to sound good humored.

"It beats me why you would want me to speak, if you're not going to listen to what I say anyway," the human let out an annoyed sigh.

And that left Jarlaxle fishing around for words for a heartbeat, which in turn did wonders to improve Entreri's mood – but of course, the assassin would be caught dead before showing it.

"I really don't understand you, Artemis. Of course I pay attention to everything that you say! Want me to quote you? For example…"

"I know you _hear_ me," the Calishite groaned, suddenly uncomfortable with the whole conversation. "But you never _listen_, Jarlaxle." If you did, Entreri added silently, half of the problems we always seem to find ourselves in wouldn't exist.

The drow rogue blinked, apparently quite bewildered. He had been expecting an angry Artemis – he had been preparing to confront an angry Artemis. But now he had found a weary Entreri instead, and somehow it was much more difficult to deal with the disappointment the man seemed to have in their partnership than with the threats and occasional flying furniture.

"Look," the man said, suddenly having found the perfect way to turn the spot light away from him, "if you want to talk, talk with her," and he nodded to the approaching pair of new companions. "She's got your brand of craziness, so you should understand each other pretty well. Just don't give me a headache, if only not for tonight."

And Jarlaxle didn't have to answer, because at that moment Yria plopped down in their table, high spirits and shining eyes and an air around her that for all its innocence had the other patrons looking over in worry.

"So," she said, in a chirpy tone, "what are we going to do now?"

No one questioned the use of 'we'.

"You don't look too depressed about having lost the gem you were supposed to recover," Jarlaxle commented, mostly because he needed some time to organize the evens that had just transpired in his head.

A flinch coming from the other drow, who had sat quietly in a corner, and the subtle rising of temperature in the inn's common room clued him in to the fact that it might not have been the smartest conversation starter ever.

"Well," the petite sorceress said, her smile a bit strained before she composed herself, "what can I say? I got experience in starting from scratch. When you adventure, you gamble… sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. And at least this time, we haven't won the reward but we haven't lost anything either… You don't seem too put out either at having lost your artifact."

Under un-baffled circumstances, Jarlaxle would have picked up on the new maturity found in the girls' speech, and he would have wondered about what she had lost before… as it was, he was only reminded of his own loss.

Ouch, he thought.

"Well, I did win some gold" – which I'm not going to share – "and I didn't really have a use for the artifact so… I guess another time," he said, only half believing his words. "But you are right in wondering. What will come now, indeed?"

"Not Heroing, definitely. That's the way to die rat poor," Yria said, and Jarlaxle had to agree – though perhaps for slightly different reasons.

The rogue leader threw a look around the table: two dark elves, one renowned assassin, and one crazy sorceress of unknown morals… no, certainly Heroing wasn't their way.

"How about Dungeon Crawling?" he suggested.

"Nah," the girl dismissed it with a wave of her hand. "There's just one Dungeon that's worth to Crawl, and that's Undermountain. And at the moment, Undermountain is undergoing heavy restoration works, so we'll have to wait for a while before raiding the place again."

One part of Jarlaxle's mind filed the information away to reflect on it later – had she survived Undermountain before? Was the legendary dungeon really being refurnished? Why? – and he shrugged.

"Well, Treasure Plundering has proven to be a bit of a fiasco, hasn't it?"

"Yes," Yria nodded, torn between smiling or frowning at the results of her newest experiment.

"And trying to Covertly Take Over the Underworld of a big city doesn't pay off, either."

Yria gave him a weird look, as if he had just grown a second head, but then she shook her head:

"Err… Obviously. How about Bounty Hunting? How does it work for you?"

Good question, Jarlaxle thought. How does it work? Entreri and he were just getting started after all.

"Oh well… I don't know, the pay's not too good but the job is quite secure," he said, and then suddenly his brilliant mind supplied him with an equally brilliant idea.

He said:

"What do you say, Artemis?"

The assassin was surprised out of his staring contest with his ale mug, and he lifted his gray gaze to meet the expectant gaze of Jarlaxle and Yria.

He cringed. They were like children. Couldn't they just leave him out of their petty discussions?

But at the same time, hidden behind the annoyance, was another feeling.

And, to be honest, it was a good one, even if he didn't really know where it was coming from.

He smirked.

"I say that we really need to shake off the dust of this dump of a village. And I say that, with our luck," he didn't say if this luck was good or bad, "something or other will find us as soon as we set foot on the road."

Jarlaxle was relieved that Entreri was answering, and he grinned wickedly at the man.

"On to the road it is, then!" he said, raising his wine in a toast.

Yria and Rizolvir exchanged a glance – just when had started that drow to look her in the eye, Jarlaxle wondered – and, apparently having reached a mute understanding with the warrior mage, the small sorceress shot her fist in the air.

"Alright! Forever onwards!"

Jarlaxle laughed and copied her pose, and the two of them started to sprout more and more 'inspiring' nonsense for their companions' sake.

And their companions shared fairly embarrassed looks, and decided that perhaps it was time to discreetly move to the bar to help themselves to another drink.

Entreri and Rizolvir grabbed a mug of ale each, and they exercised their 'blending in' abilities while the colorful Yria and Jarlaxle, in turn, did their very best to assure that they had every single patron's attention.

The Calishite took a sip as he looked on the show, and he thought that Jarlaxle was a manipulative bastard, and that he hated drow…

… But that he could get used to this.

Very well used to this, and the thought surprised a fleeting smile curling up his thin lips.

o O o

The End

_(… or is it?)_

o O o

A/N: _And so we got to the end… I'm sorry it took this long to update, the story insisted on being 11 chapters long – and that's one of my pet peeves, so I had to wrestle the ending into submission… Hope you liked it. _

_You guys seem to have liked this story more than I'd have dared to hope and to imagine – thanks, thanks, forever thanks because without you, I'd not have found the motivation to write. Of course, special thanks go to my reviewers, and to those who have added the fiction to their favorites/alert lists, but also to the large silent fan base _The long way to profit_ has – at least, it has one according to the Reader Traffic feature… Now that we've come to an end, I'd love if some of you left a final message! Today or next year, I don't care…. But I'd like to know if I've managed to entertain you and to bring you a smile: that's what I work for, and that's my greatest reward. _

_Now, an important notice: there will be a sequel to this story. I'm taking a while off, but I'll come back soon with the adventures of our dear characters… Please check my profile to be updated on my projects, sequels, and side stories. _

_Until then, let me say it just once more: thank YOU!_


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